


Sticks and Stones

by irismay42



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 03:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13402770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irismay42/pseuds/irismay42
Summary: When Lucy, Rufus and Wyatt are erased from her timeline, it's up to Jiya, the only person who remembers they existed, to investigate the seemingly unconnected disappearances of three children in 1991, foil Rittenhouse's latest attack on Reality, and bring the Time Team home.Oneshot.  Gratuitous excuse to write the Time Team as kids.  Warnings for kiddies in various states of peril.





	Sticks and Stones

**Author's Note:**

> Summary: When Lucy, Rufus and Wyatt are erased from her timeline, it's up to Jiya, the only person who remembers they existed, to investigate the seemingly unconnected disappearances of three children in 1991, foil Rittenhouse's latest attack on Reality, and bring the Time Team home.  
> Rating: T  
> Words: 22,600  
> Spoilers: All of season 1. Set at the beginning of a hypothetical season 2.  
> Warnings: Minor language. Kiddies in peril.  
> Disclaimer: Everything is owned by someone else. (But mostly Kripke.)  
> A/N: Had to get this posted before season 2 airs as it's likely to be horribly Kripked in relation to Jiya's new abilities! Also, if being unable to visit any point in time where you already exist includes when you were in the womb, then this story probably shouldn't exist either. Some liberties taken with the characters' ages based on Rufus and Lucy both being born in 1983 and the relative ages of the actors. (With the exception of Jiya, whose date of birth is on her hospital bracelet in the season 1 finale, believe it or not!)  
> Writing time travel is hard.

** STICKS AND STONES **

“Anakin Skywalker.”

“Uh-uhhhh, survey says no!”

Jiya frowned suspiciously.  “Are you cheating, Rufus Carlin?”

Rufus held his hand over his heart, as if mortally wounded by the suggestion.  “Of course not.  It was _Luke_ Skywalker.”

Jiya’s frown deepened.  “How can he have said it first?  Anakin came before Luke!  I’m a Trekker and even I know that!”

“Chronologically,” Rufus clarified.  “I asked who said it first.  And it was Luke.  In 1977.”

“That’s crap,” Jiya said.  “You didn’t say, ‘Who said it first in the order the movies came out!’”

“Well even if I said ‘in chronological order’ it would have been Obi-Wan Kenobi who said it first, not Anakin Skywalker.”

“You’re a cheater.”

“And you’re a sore loser.  And a Trekkie.  I’m not sure which is worse!”

“Well—well—the cartoons suck!”

“Uh.  You remember that totally lame _Star_ _Trek_ cartoon, right?  Or are we conveniently forgetting that?  So completely inferior to _Clone_ _Wars_.”

“It’s thirty-something years older than _Clone_ _Wars_!  Not a fair comparison!  It’s like comparing _Star_ _Wars_ to _The_ _Phantom_ _Menace_!  Oh wait, it’s nothing like that because _The_ _Phantom_ _Menace_ sucked!”

“So, you admit the original _Star_ _Wars_ didn’t suck?”

Jiya paused.

“A-ha!” Rufus cried out triumphantly.  “Twenty bucks!  You owe me twenty bucks for getting you to admit it!”

“I so do not!”

“Yes you—”

And then he wasn’t there anymore.

Jiya blinked.

Blinked again.

And the room blinked back at her.

“No, not again…” she murmured.  She’d not had an episode in weeks and was hoping that whatever her unscheduled trip in the Lifeboat had done to her, maybe it was only temporary.

“Rufus?” she called out.  “Where did you go?  There’s cheating and there’s cheating, babe, and this is a bit extreme, even for you!”

The room, suspiciously, didn’t answer, and neither did Rufus.

“Rufus?” 

Okay, this was starting to freak her out.  He’d been _right here_.  Where the hell could he have gone between blinks?

“Rufus!”

A little desperately, she tore her phone from her pocket, hitting speed dial and waiting.

Nothing happened.

Until a woman’s voice squeaked out of the speaker, “Your call could not be connected.  Please check the number and dial again.”

Jiya glanced at the number, not even recognizing it.

Scrolling through her contacts, her finger skidded to a halt at “C”, where her dentist Dr. Cambridge was followed by Denise Christopher.

Where the hell had Rufus’ number gone?

“Lucy,” she muttered.  “Lucy will know what to do…”

Scrolling down to “P”, she found no entry for Lucy Preston either.

Taking a breath, she was almost too scared to go to “L” for fear of what she’d find there.

Or not find there.

Nope.  No Wyatt either. 

This was wrong.

This was so wrong!

What the hell just happened?

Had time changed somehow? 

Had Emma taken out the Mothership and done something to her friends?

She would have gotten a call if that had happened.  Agent Christopher would have…

Agent Christopher wasn’t in charge anymore.

Agent Neville and Lucy’s dad had...when Rittenhouse had...but that hadn’t happened because Lucy’s grandad…

Okay this was confusing.

Jiya vividly remembered being at work yesterday.  Agent Christopher and Connor Mason were still in charge.  Rittenhouse had been all but destroyed.

Y’know, apart from the whole thing with Lucy’s mom.

Wyatt had been allowed to stay on for a while to help in the search for Emma after she stole the Mothership.

Hell, she remembered she and Rufus having coffee and bagels in bed this morning.

But… She also remembered being in a warehouse with him, and Lucy and Wyatt and Agent Christopher.  They had the Lifeboat, but they were hiding it from Rittenhouse who were in control of Mason Industries, led by Lucy’s dad and her mom too. 

Rittenhouse had arrested Garcia Flynn and executed him.

But she remembered speaking to Flynn yesterday.  He was actually being kind of helpful now that he was assisting them in the hunt for Emma.

He’d been telling her about the new tech they’d developed.  A way to travel to a time where you already exist without going splat.  It’s how Anthony could go to 1969.

She remembered that.

So, what the hell was going on?

The room blinked at her again, and suddenly she wasn’t in her apartment anymore.

She was standing in a dark basement, a single bare lightbulb swinging above her head, wind whistling outside and someone was crying.

There was a little girl sitting on the floor against the wall opposite her.

She was maybe eight or nine years old, dark brown hair in long braids, brown eyes blinking back tears, and she had her arms around a younger kid, a boy, maybe six years old.  He wasn’t crying, but she was hanging onto him as if she was comforting him, not the other way around.

The boy looked up at Jiya as she stood in front of him, blinking round blue eyes at her.  There was a bruise blooming across his cheekbone and a cut above his eyebrow and she was pretty sure he also had a split lip.

He appraised her quizzically for a second, before glancing off to his left, to where another, older boy was standing, tinkering with the lock on the door at the top of a rickety-looking flight of wooden stairs.

“Gotta be a way to open this,” the older boy was saying.  “What would MacGyver do?  Need the right amount of pressure in the right spot…maybe a fulcrum…”

He stopped and turned, his mouth hanging open as he caught sight of Jiya.

He was black, maybe the same age as the girl, dark eyes huge in the muddy light as he gazed at Jiya and murmured, “Where the heck did you come from, lady?”

And as soon as he spoke, Jiya knew exactly who she was talking to.

“Rufus?”

*

“Alright, alright, hold on to your underwear!”

Agent Denise Christopher’s voiced emanated through the ornate front door, but Jiya carried right on banging her fist against it anyway.

When the door opened, the Homeland Security agent just stood looking at her, a blank expression on her face.

“Jiya?  How do you even know where I live?”

“Who’s in charge of the time machine?” Jiya demanded urgently.

Agent Christopher glanced over her shoulder, back into the house, carefully stepping out onto the porch and pulling the door closed behind her.

“Jiya, what’s going on?”

Jiya took a breath.

Okay.  Everything was going to be okay.  Agent Christopher was here, at home, not stuck in some black site prison cell somewhere.  It was all going to be okay...

“Who’s in charge of the time machine?” Jiya repeated.  “Is it Rittenhouse?”

Agent Christopher frowned at her.  “No, it’s DHS.  Like it’s always been.  Except for Emma Whitmore running off with the Mothership...”

“Oh thank God!”  Jiya threw her arms around Agent Christopher’s neck for a second, before pausing, taking a breath and stepping back.  “Oops.  Sorry.  Totally invading your personal space.”

“Jiya?”  The agent’s hand was on her hip and she had that look on her face that she got when she was about to yell at someone.  Then her expression softened a little.  “Did you have another episode?”

Jiya nodded.  “Yes.  No.  Yes.  Maybe.  I think—I think maybe I went back in time.”

Agent Christopher’s brow furrowed.  “I don’t remember scheduling any missions.  And if Miss Whitmore had taken out the Mothership, I would have—”

Her phone chose that moment to ring, and she pulled it from her pocket, glancing at the screen, then at Jiya, then back at the screen again, before answering it tentatively.

She didn’t say anything for the longest time, just nodded a couple of times before confirming, “I’m on my way in now, sir.”

After she’d finished the call, she slowly, deliberately put away her phone before turning her attention to Jiya.  “How did you know?”

Jiya shrugged.  “I went back in time.”

Agent Christopher nodded.  “Mason thought that might be what was happening.”

“So did Rufus.”

The agent squinted at her.  “Who’s Rufus?”

Jiya swallowed.  “That’s the problem,” she said.  “I think our whole team just ceased to exist.”

*

They were sitting in the conference room.  Jiya, Agent Christopher, Connor Mason, Garcia Flynn (and didn’t that still seem the weirdest thing, like, ever?) ...and two other people Jiya totally didn’t recognize.

“So, let’s go through this again,” Agent Christopher said slowly.  “We know travelling with four people in the Lifeboat has...affected you.”

Jiya nodded.  “Yes!” she confirmed.  “That obviously still happened here or I wouldn’t...I wouldn’t have done what I did this morning.  But if Rufus, Lucy and Wyatt aren’t here—”

“Who are Rufus, Lucy and Wyatt?”  One of the people sitting around the table who Jiya totally didn’t recognize frowned uncertainly at her. 

She was maybe in her early thirties, Jiya figured.  Blonde hair tied back in a short ponytail, minimal make-up, dressed in a plain black t-shirt and sitting up so straight in her seat it was a wonder her spine didn’t snap.

“They’re our team!” Jiya burst out, turning her attention back to Agent Christopher.  “Our team!  You know?  Pilot—”

“Which is you,” Agent Christopher said.

“Historian—”

“Luis—” She gestured to the other person Jiya didn’t know, a slightly-built Hispanic guy sitting opposite who looked all of twelve years old.

“And soldier—”

“Master Sergeant Felicity McGregor,” Agent Christopher indicated the scary-looking blonde woman.

Jiya turned her gaze from the two imposters back to Agent Christopher, then to Flynn, and finally to Connor Mason, who had said absolutely nothing since Jiya had come running in here desperately trying to convince them that reality was all wrong, dammit!

“No!” Jiya burst out.  “No!  I’m not the pilot!  Rufus is the pilot!  Rufus Carlin.  Idiot _Star_ _Wars_ fan and the smartest man I know, even if he does love _Manimal_!”

“Jiya—”

“And Lucy Preston is the historian.  Remember?  Her parents turned out to both be Rittenhouse?  Lost her sister when Flynn changed how the whole Hindenburg thing went down?”

Agent Christopher frowned at her, while Mason shifted in his seat, his expression still unreadable.

“I didn’t change the Hindenburg,” Flynn put in.  “Sergeant McGregor shot me before I got the chance.”

The soldier grinned briefly.  “That was a damned good shot, even if I do say so myself.”

Jiya glanced from the soldier to Flynn and back again.  “But Wyatt,” Jiya continued.  “Master Sergeant Logan.  He’s our soldier.  Remember him?  Stole the Lifeboat to try and save his wife Jessica?”

“Jiya,” Mason suddenly put in, his voice slow and measured.  “Who do you think was in the Lifeboat when you had your little—uh—mishap?”

Jiya shrugged.  “I told you.  Our team.  Rufus, Lucy and Wyatt.”

“Not Luis, Felicity and Riz?”

It was Jiya’s turn to frown.  “No.  They weren’t—who the hell is Riz?”

“He was injured, remember?” Agent Christopher persisted.  “Al Capone shot him.”

“Wait, what?  No!  Rufus was—”

“He managed to pilot the Lifeboat back so that you could go back with him and rescue Felicity and Luis?  Remember?  Flynn had them.  You got them out.  But Riz was more gravely injured than we thought, and you had to help him pilot the Lifeboat back?  And he—he passed away just before the four of you landed back here?”

Jiya shook her head.  “No,” she said softly.  “No, that’s not how it—”

“And then you had your first seizure,” Mason continued.

“No,” Jiya said.  “No.  I swear.  That’s not how it happened.”

Agent Christopher sighed.  “Look, if you hadn’t correctly predicted Emma taking out the Mothership again, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.  How did you know—”

“She’s in 1991, right?” Jiya interrupted.  “June 30th?  Palo Alto?”

“How do you know that?” Mason asked.

Jiya rested her head in her hands briefly.  “I told you!” she insisted.  “I was there!”

“In 1991?” Flynn asked.

“Yes!  This morning!”

“Weren’t you born in 1991?” Luis asked casually.

Jiya paused to consider him for a second.  “July,” she said.  “Cutting it a little fine, I know—”

“But Emma can go there because of the new shielding technology Anthony installed on the Mothership,” Flynn murmured.  “Anthony was the only one who ever dared use it, but I guess Miss Whitmore has gotten a little more brazen since going over to Rittenhouse.”

“How do you know you were in 1991?” Agent Christopher asked suddenly.  “When you—whatever you did earlier?”

Jiya blew out a breath.  “Google,” she explained shortly.  “When I—when I came back to myself I Googled them.”

“Who?” Mason asked.

Jiya sighed impatiently.  “Rufus Carlin, Lucy Preston and Wyatt Logan!” she told them, as if they totally ought to know that.

Agent Christopher sat up a little straighter.  “And what did Google tell you about them?”

Finally...

“That they all disappeared,” Jiya replied triumphantly.  “On June 30th, 1991.”

“How did—”

“No one ever put it together before,” Jiya said, pushing her tablet under Agent Christopher’s nose.  “Three children in three different states all disappeared on the same day.  Lucy Preston.  Eight years old.  Walking home the block and a half from a piano lesson to her house in Palo Alto.  Daughter of the renowned historian, Carol Preston.  Never made it home.  Rufus Carlin.  Seven years old.  Went out to fetch groceries for his sick mom while his dad was working a double shift.  West Chicago.  Never came back.  Wyatt Logan, aged six, living in a trailer park with his father in West Texas.  Reported missing by his grandfather after his dad came up from a three-day bender not knowing where the hell his kid was.  Kids go missing all the time.  These three—they had no connection to one another.  Scattered across the country.  Nobody saw the pattern because in 1991 there _wasn’t_ one.”

“But you’re saying that’s our team?” Agent Christopher reiterated.  “These three children who disappeared in 1991?”

Jiya nodded emphatically.  “We have to get them back!  Rufus, he’s—he’s my—my—”

It was the scary blonde soldier lady, of all people, who put a comforting hand atop of Jiya’s.

“Take a breath, Jiya,” she said softly.  “We’re gonna figure this out.”

And it was so like something Wyatt would have said it actually made Jiya feel worse.

“But if this Rufus, Lucy and Wyatt are the team you remember,” Luis said slowly, “then who are Flick and I?  And—and what happens to us if you get them back?”

Felicity frowned, pulling away slightly.  “You don’t know who we are, do you?”

Jiya shook her head slowly.  “Never met you before today.”

“Okay, that’s not creepy at all,” Luis commented.

“What makes you think it’s Emma who took these children?” Mason asked suddenly.

Jiya swallowed.  “I—I think I saw her.  Before I—before I came back.”

“Where were you?” Agent Christopher asked.

“In a basement.  I think.  Rufus was trying to figure a way out, and Lucy was crying, and Wyatt looked beat all to hell, and who even does that to a little kid?  And—”

“And where did you see Emma?” Mason put in.

Jiya stopped to draw breath.  “I wasn’t there long,” she explained.  “Kinda beamed in and beamed out?  But Rufus saw me.  He spoke to me.  And then the door was opening and Lucy was scared because she said the horrible lady who took them was coming back, and then there was someone coming through the door and Rufus was running down the stairs, and all I got was an impression of red hair before I beamed back out again.”

Agent Christopher took a breath, running her finger slowly across the screen of Jiya’s tablet.

“Alright then,” she said, abruptly looking up.  “I guess we’re going to 1991.”

Jiya swallowed.  It was gonna be okay.  Everything was gonna be okay.  She was gonna get Rufus back...

And suddenly it occurred to her that Lucy had been living with this feeling of loss and terror for almost a year.  Since her sister was erased.

How the hell she’d remained as patient as she had, Jiya had no idea.

Because this?  Knowing someone you loved simply didn’t exist, never existed?  It was torture.

“Well,” Agent Christopher added, “you two are going to 1991, at least.”  She indicated Jiya and Luis with a wave of her hand.

“Wait, what?” Luis said, complexion paling.

Flick actually started to rise up out of her seat.  “Over my dead—”

“We’re too old,” Flynn informed her matter-of-factly.  “You and I.  We can’t go to 1991.   Not until the tech guys have finished the shielding I gave them the specs for.”

The sergeant glanced from Flynn to Jiya, jaw tightening.  “How close is it to ready?”

Flynn shrugged.  “Not close enough.”

“You’re not going on a mission like this without tactical support,” Flick insisted resolutely.

“We don’t have another tactical officer,” Agent Christopher pointed out.  “And by the sounds of things, we don’t have time to find one.”

“We’ll be fine,” Jiya insisted.  “We just find the kids and...”

“And what?” Flick asked.  “What then?”

Jiya shrugged.  “I guess we just get them away from Emma.”

“But what if she tries this again?” Mason put in.  “You can’t protect them forever.”

“I don’t understand why she hasn’t just killed them,” Flynn mused.  “That’s what I would have done.”  He shrugged non-apologetically as all eyes swiveled in his direction.  “Just saying.”

“Maybe that’s the plan,” Flick agreed.

“Or maybe she’s just hoping to turn their lives in another direction,” Jiya mused, grabbing her tablet and sliding it back across the table.

“What do you mean?” Luis asked, as Jiya began typing furiously into Google.

She stopped abruptly once she had her answer.

“What?” Mason asked.  “What did you find out?”

Jiya swallowed.  “You know how childhood trauma or a particularly traumatic event can sometimes change a person’s life forever?” she said slowly.  “Well since I last Googled our team, oh, thirty minutes ago, their histories have changed.”

“Changed how?” Luis asked, as Flynn sat forward in his seat and Mason did the opposite.

“Well,” Jiya said.  “According to Google, Lucy Preston never became a history professor.  She ran off to join a band in her sophomore year of college and ended up dying in a freak car accident a couple months later.  Car spun off a bridge in a rainstorm.  She drowned.”

Of all the people gathered around the conference table, it was Flynn who looked the most disturbed by this news.  Which was weird, considering this Flynn never even met Lucy.

“And the others?” Agent Christopher asked.

Jiya traced her finger over her tablet.  “Rufus never made it out of Chicago,” she said slowly.  “Never made it to MIT.  You never found him, sir,” she said, glancing in Mason’s direction.  “In—in the reality I remember, you found him in a community outreach program.  Sponsored him.  Paid his college tuition.  In this reality that never happened.  He—he works as IT tech support at his old high school.”

Mason inclined his head.  “That’s...unfortunate,” he said, but considering he never knew Rufus in this reality, Jiya wasn’t sure what else he could say.

“And your soldier?” Flick asked.  “Logan, right?”

Jiya closed the cover of her tablet and looked away.  “He...died,” she said shortly.  “Not long after Emma snatched him, actually.”

“What happened to him?” Agent Christopher asked.

Jiya shrugged.  “I’m not sure.  The reports aren’t very clear.  His father was arrested at some point.  Child endangerment, maybe?  I can’t quite—”

“When you first looked into what happened to your teammates,” Flynn interrupted suddenly, “earlier today.  Were they ever found?  After they were abducted?”

Jiya shook her head.

“So something has changed between then and now?  Something changed in the past.”

Jiya caught his drift.  “Emma was going to kill them originally?  But changed her mind?”

“Or maybe someone intervened.”

Jiya blinked at him.  “But we haven’t gone back there to do anything about it yet.”

“Lucy Preston,” Flynn continued.  “Carol Preston—her mother.  She’s Rittenhouse.”

“She—yes she is, how do you know that?”

“We’ve run afoul of her a couple of times since we took down the majority of Rittenhouse a few months ago,” Agent Christopher explained.

“I would imagine she wouldn’t have been very happy if her daughter was murdered in 1991,” Flynn continued.

“You think she intervened?” Agent Christopher asked.

“Present day Carol Preston or 1991 Carol Preston?” Jiya asked.

Flynn shrugged.  “Either.  Both.  I’m just not sure who you’re going to be able to trust back there.  I think there might be more than just Emma involved in this.  Rittenhouse have a time machine now.  We don’t know what they might be doing in our future to change things in our present or our past.”

“That’s comforting,” Mason murmured.

“So how will we know what to do?” Luis asked.

Jiya took a breath.  “I guess we’ll figure it out when we get there,” she said.  “Whatever we do, we have to get there before Emma has a chance to do any damage to them—physically or psychologically.”

“So we round them up individually?” Flick asked.  “Before they’re taken?”

“Whatever we do, we need to do it soon,” Flynn put in, glancing down at Jiya’s tablet.  “History just changed again.”

He turned the tablet to face Agent Christopher, a headline from the San Francisco Chronicle proclaiming, _Bodies of three children found in Marin County woodland_.

“We need to go,” Jiya said slowly.  “We need to go _now_.”

*

“You think they got him yet?” Luis asked, following Jiya down the short path and through the gates into the trailer park.

So far they were oh-for-two.  By the time they got to Lucy’s and Rufus’ houses, they’d both already been taken, and they couldn’t risk a short jump to try and get there that little bit earlier just in case they wound up running into themselves later.

Bad things...

So they’d made a last-ditch attempt at West Texas, hoping Emma and her goons hadn’t made it here yet.

Jiya had no memory of Flynn overseeing the installation of a battery on the Lifeboat like the one Anthony had installed on the Mothership in her timeline, but it might have saved at least one of her future colleagues’ lives today.

The trailer park, however, was...not encouraging.

It was 8.30am and there were already semi-comatose rednecks slumped in lawn chairs in front of most of the trailers, and Jiya had no idea how, if this was the same timeline the Wyatt Logan she knew came from, he was quite as well-adjusted as he seemed to be.

She glanced down at the scrap of paper in her hand, reading the address the lady in the post office in town had given her for the hundredth time, before lighting on a beat-up looking trailer hunkered underneath a foliage-challenged tree that seemed like it might topple right over in a light breeze.

One of the trailer’s windows was smashed, and it looked like someone had at some point attempted to pry the door open with a crowbar.

Luis frowned.  “You sure your soldier guy lives here?” he asked a little uncertainly.  “It looks a little—” he paused while he carefully chose the right word, “—lowbrow.”

Jiya bit her lip.  She had to admit, the same thought had crossed her mind too.

“I guess there’s a reason people join the army,” she said.  “At least a few of them might be running away from something.  Or someone.  I don’t think Wyatt’s dad was the nicest guy in the world.”

She gulped in a breath before knocking on the door.

No reply.

She knocked again.

Still no reply.

“Um, hey!” she tried calling out.  “We’re from the lotto.  You’ve won a million dollars!”

Luis frowned at her and she shrugged.

But the door opened a crack and she could see a single blue eye peering out of the gap at about waist height.

“What?” a small voice snapped.

“Uh—” Jiya stammered.

“You don’t look like you’re from the lotto,” the voice added.  “My dad owe you money?”

Jiya blinked.  “Uh.  No...”

“Are you from Family Services?” the kid continued.  “Not supposed to talk to you.  My dad says.”

“We’re not from Family Services.”

“Don’t got no money.”

“Don’t want any money.”

Jiya didn’t remember ever hearing Wyatt talk with an obvious accent before.

The door opened a crack wider.

Two blue eyes were now visible.

“Are you cops?”

“Nope.”

“Repo men?”

“No.”

“Repo ladies?”

“No.”

“Aliens?”

Jiya actually laughed at that one.  “No.”

The door opened a little wider and the youngest kid Jiya recognized from her little “episode” earlier that day stood looking at her.

“My dad’s not here,” he said.

“Where’s your mom?” Luis asked, and Jiya flinched.

The kid’s expression didn’t alter.  “She died,” was all he said.

Luis swallowed.  “I’m sorry.”

The kid shrugged.  “My grandpa says she’s with the angels in heaven,” he said.  “My dad says that’s bullshit.”

“What do you think?” Jiya asked.

The kid shrugged again.  “Don’t know,” he said.  “Never met no angel.”  He squinted, before adding, “You’re not angels, are you?”

Jiya laughed again.  “No,” she said.  Then, “Would you believe we’re time travelers?”

She noticed Luis’ mouth drop open out of the corner of her eye.

The kid considered that for a second.  “Show me your time machine,” he said, apparently unfazed by the information.

Jiya glanced at Luis.  “Okay.”

The kid paused.  “Really?”

“Sure,” Jiya said.  “Come on.”

She held her hand out to him and he squinted.  “Not supposed to talk to strangers.  Grandpa Sherwin says.”

“What if I told you in twenty-six years’ time we won’t be strangers?”

The kid’s face scrunched up a little, and he came further out of the doorway.

And Jiya noted the bruise on his cheek, the split lip and the cut above his eye she’d seen in her—thing—earlier that day.

Which she’d presumed had been inflicted on him when he’d been kidnapped. 

Not before.

“If you know me,” the kid asked slowly, “prove it.”

“Your name’s Wyatt Logan, right?”

The kid squinted at her some more.  “Anybody could have told you that,” he pointed out suspiciously.

“Okay,” Jiya said.  Damn.  Of the three of them, Wyatt was the one Jiya knew the least about.  Besides Jessica, he didn’t really seem to have any other interests.  “Your birthday’s in November,” she offered.

The kid took another step forward.

“Right?”

He gazed up at her solemnly.  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

And didn’t that just beat everything?

“You don’t need to call me ma’am,” she said.  “My name’s Jiya.”

Wyatt squinted at her again.  “My grandpa says it’s polite to call a lady ‘ma’am,’” he told her.

Jiya tried not to grin at him but wasn’t entirely successful.

And she made a mental note to discuss this conversation with grown-up Lucy the next time she saw her.

“Well, yes,” Jiya agreed.  “But you can call me Jiya.”

Wyatt continued to gaze at her thoughtfully.  “Does your time machine look like a DeLorean?” he asked at length.

“Uh, no,” Jiya told him. “Wanna see?”

She held out her hand to him again, and he glanced over his shoulder a little uncertainly, before reaching out and taking it.

“We have to be quiet,” he said, leading her away from the door after he closed it behind him silently.  “In case he hears.”

“Who hears?”

Wyatt blinked up at her and shrugged.  “No one,” he said, tugging at her hand.  “Can we see your time machine now?”

Jiya nodded.  “We can,” she said.  “And we can go for a ride in it if you want to?”

He blinked owlishly at her.  “Really?  Where to?  If I’m gone too long my dad will...my dad will be real mad.”

“Time machine,” Jiya told him with a wink.  “We can get back before we left if you want to.”

Wyatt glanced over his shoulder again.  “That’s okay,” he said quietly, before looking up at her earnestly.  “Can you take me someplace real far?” he asked.  “So’s maybe I don’t have to come back?”

Jiya swallowed.  “Won’t you miss your grandpa?”

Wyatt examined his feet.  “I guess.”

Jiya squeezed his hand.  “Come on.  You’ll like this.  We’re going to fix everything.”

*

 _“That’s_ your time machine?” Wyatt burst out, fingers still curled around Jiya’s, but pulling back, a little hesitant to follow her into the Lifeboat.

“Uh-huh.  Cool, huh?”

Wyatt wrinkled his nose.  “Looks like my grandpa’s Buick,” he decided.  “Are you sure it’s a time machine?”

“Last time I looked,” Jiya said.  “It’s not much, but it’s got it where it counts, kid.”

A tiny smile lit up Wyatt’s face.  “If you’re Han Solo,” he said, “do I get to be Luke Skywalker?”

“Sure,” Jiya said, remembering a conversation she once had with him where he’d told her it was perfectly acceptable to like both _Star_ _Wars_ and _Star_ _Trek_ and he didn’t understand Rufus’ problem at all.

Wyatt glanced up at Luis.  “That makes you Princess Leia,” he told him.  “Or Chewbacca,” he added.

Luis didn’t seem entirely sure what to make of that.

Jiya bent down slightly and whispered, “I’m not sure he likes _Star_ _Wars_.”

Wyatt shook his head.  “Some people are weird,” he commented.  “Bet he don’t like _Star_ _Trek_ neither.”

“You like _Star_ _Trek_?”

“I like Captain Picard.”

“Me too.”

Jiya tugged at his hand.  “You ready?”

He took a breath.  “Make it so,” he murmured.

*

Considering how sick grown-up Wyatt got in the Lifeboat, Jiya was pretty amazed the short hop to Marin County didn’t seem to faze his younger self at all.

“Are we in the future now?” he asked, eyes wide as he somehow managed to work his way out of his seatbelts without Jiya or Luis having to show him how to do it.

“Not yet,” Jiya said.  “We gotta go rescue two more kids first.”

“Are they gonna be my friends in the future too?”

Jiya glanced over her shoulder at him as she powered down the Lifeboat.  “Yes they are.”

“And this lady wants to hurt all three of us?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So that we won’t stop her doing bad stuff in the future?”

“That’s right.”

“’Cause we’re like Sam Beckett.”

“Exactly like Sam Beckett.”

“Putting right what once went wrong.”

“Or stopping someone from making something go wrong that originally went right.  So you’re like a reverse Sam Beckett.”

Wyatt considered that.  “Like Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock in _City_ _on_ _the_ _Edge_ _of_ _Forever_.”

Jiya virtually beamed at him.  “I _love_ that episode,” she sighed.

“Me too,” Wyatt said, a little distracted by the view out of the door window.  “I like Mr. Spock’s hat.”

Jiya inclined her head slightly.  Well, she supposed there were worse reasons for liking a TV show.  “Good to know,” she said.

“My mom made me one like that once,” Wyatt continued, idly running a finger over the control pad by the door.  “When Jimmy Redmond said I had big ears.”

Jiya had to stifle a snigger.

Just as Wyatt jabbed a finger at the control pad and the door whooshed open.

He blinked, startled, and Luis nearly fell out of his chair trying to grab his shirt before he toppled out through the doorway.

Wyatt blinked again, apparently oblivious to the historian’s concern for his safety or the precarious situation he was in.

“This is California?” he asked.  “Looks like Endor.”

Luis wound his fingers a little tighter into the kid’s t-shirt, pulling him away from the drop that would probably have broken his neck.  “It is,” he said, sucking in a panicked breath.  “California.  Not Endor.  Although...yeah, it’s sort of Endor too.”

Wyatt didn’t reply to that, just glanced at the height of the header he’d barely been aware he was in danger of taking, before murmuring, “Your time machine kinda sucks.  You need some steps.  Somebody could hurt themselves.”

“Duly noted,” Jiya said, squeezing past him and lowering herself down to the ground.  She turned and held her hands up to him, and he considered for a second before climbing on out of the doorway and scrambling down the outside of the Lifeboat completely under his own power.  “Oohkay,” she said, nodding.  “Like to do things your own way, huh?”

The kid didn’t appear to be listening, having wandered off into the nearest line of trees.

“I thought soldiers were supposed to be good at the whole, ‘following instructions’ thing,” Luis observed, coming up on her shoulder.  “He seems a little—”

“Single minded?” Jiya offered.  “Yeah.  Doesn’t grow out of it.”

*

“What makes you think this is the place you saw?” Luis asked, peeking around the tree he and Jiya had been standing behind for the last five minutes.  “When you had your—whatever?”

Jiya shrugged.  “Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?” she said.  “Lucy’s body being found three miles away from a cabin owned by her mom’s father?”

Luis inclined his head.  “I guess.”

“If you wanna get in without anybody seeing you,” Wyatt abruptly chimed in, and Jiya suddenly realized she had no idea where he’d been for the last couple of minutes while she and Luis had been trying to decide what to do, “you don’t wanna go this way.  Too many windows.  There’s another door down there where no one inside would see us coming.”

Jiya blinked down at him.  “You break into houses a lot?” she asked.

Wyatt shrugged.  “My grandpa was in the army,” he told her.  “He knows stealth tic-tacs.”

Jiya frowned at him.  “Stealth...?  Tactics?  He taught you stealth tactics?”

Wyatt frowned right on back at her.  “Tactics.  Yeah.  My dad oughtta listen then maybe he wouldn’t get arrested so much.”

Jiya swallowed.  “He wouldn’t...?  Oohkay.”

Wyatt caught hold of her hand and started pulling her down a path that seemed to lead around back of the cabin.  Glancing over his shoulder at her, he put a finger to his lips before whispering, “Gotta be quiet.  There’s a lady with red hair and a skinny guy who looks kinda mean.  But I think the kids are in the cellar and the lock looks pretty easy.”

“Pretty easy to what?  You pick locks too?”

Wyatt shrugged.  “My dad says it’s—” he screwed up his face a little, as if trying to remember the exact words, “—an ee-sen-shull skill.”

Wyatt’s dad, Jiya mused, did not sound at all like someone who should have been left in charge of a child.  “Wait,” she said suddenly, tugging on Wyatt’s hand.  He stopped and glanced back at her quizzically.  “How do you know the kids are in the cellar?

“I heard someone crying,” he answered simply.

Jiya thought back to her little head trip this morning and remembered Lucy sitting in a cellar in tears.  Then another thought occurred to her.  “Exactly how close did you get to this cabin while Luis and I were discussing how to get in?”

Wyatt inclined his head to one side.  “I only listened at the door.  I would have gotten in then except the skinny guy came out, so I had to come back.”

Jiya shuddered.  How Wyatt had survived to adulthood she had no idea.

Nevertheless, she dutifully followed him down the path, skirting around the back of the cabin to where a big black van was parked next to a wooden door that did indeed look like it led down to some kind of basement or cellar.

Wyatt had already slipped a Swiss Army knife out of his jeans pocket and got to work on the lock, which he had open in less time than it took Jiya to decide which blend of coffee to have in the morning.

He grinned up at her as he pushed at the door, only for someone on the other side to let out a strangled yell followed by the sound of sneakered feet running down wooden stairs.

Jiya closed her eyes for a second.

Rufus had been at the top of the stairs trying to figure out the lock.

Lucy had been sitting on the floor crying, but trying to look like she was comforting Wyatt.

It had been Emma who had come through the door, causing Rufus to run down the stairs.

Wait.  If this Wyatt knew how to pick locks, why had Rufus been the one trying to figure out how to do it in her vision?  Was that a different Wyatt?  A different Rufus?  Had they changed it already?  Had they already changed what her vision had told her was going to happen?

Wyatt was with Jiya, not with Lucy.  He was the one who opened the door, not Emma.

Was this good news?  Had she fixed it?  Had her friends been un-erased from history?

She had no way to know.

All she knew was she had to get the children out of here, out of Emma’s clutches and to safety to ensure the future she knew, the future where she was in love with Rufus and he with her, actually happened.

So, first things first.

Find Lucy and Rufus and get them out of here.

Wyatt already appeared to have gotten the first part covered.

“Who are you?” she heard a little girl’s voice demanding as she followed Wyatt into the cellar.

She blinked in the dimmed light, gaze following the retreating form of a boy as he took the stairs two at a time before coming to a dead stop slightly behind the girl with the long brown braids who was standing with her hands on her hips looking up the stairs at Wyatt like she might break him in half if he came anywhere near her.

Her eyes were red-rimmed and her bottom lip was trembling, which kind of undermined the whole, “come near me and I’ll end you” vibe she was trying to put out.

Wyatt looked right on back at her, apparently unmoved.  “We’re here to rescue you,” he told the girl shortly.  “And you’re welcome.”

Lucy’s hands remained resolutely on her hips and her brow furrowed, while Rufus hovered behind her, hands in his pockets and shoulders pulled up to his ears. 

“You’re a kid,” Lucy informed Wyatt.  “I seriously doubt you could rescue anybody.”

“Picked the lock, didn’t I?” he pointed out, which prompted Rufus to pipe up,

“I nearly had it.  Two more minutes and I would have totally Macgyvered that thing.”

“I can show you how to do it quicker if you want,” Wyatt offered, before adding, “but we need to go now.”  When Lucy and Rufus didn’t move, he added, “Nasty lady wants to hurt you.”

Lucy folded her arms across her chest.  “I’m not going anywhere with you till you tell me who you are,” she informed him.

Jiya decided at this juncture that maybe she should step in.  As the adult in the conversation.  “Look, Wyatt’s not kidding,” she said.  “We really need to go.”

“And who are you?” Lucy demanded.  “My mom says I’m not supposed to go anywhere with strangers, so you better tell me right now or I’m not moving.”

Jiya blinked and Wyatt huffed.

“You’re bossy,” he told the girl.

Lucy raised her chin.  “Yeah, well you’re...short.”

Wyatt didn’t seem particularly stung by the comment.  “I’m six,” he said instead. “I’m supposed to be short.  At least I’m not bossy.”

Lucy fairly bristled.  “I’m older than you,” she pointed out.  “You have to do what I say.  That’s the law.”

Wyatt scowled at her.  “Well, yes ma’am,” he grumbled, and Lucy’s eyes narrowed considerably.  “But I’m pretty sure that ain’t no law.”

“Well ‘ain’t’ ain’t—isn’t—even a word!”

“Wait, wait, guys!” Rufus suddenly stepped in.  He turned to Lucy.  “Maybe we should do what they say?  Before the red-haired lady comes back.”

“Oh, you’re a little bit too late for that, sweetie.”

Jiya spun at the unexpected voice in her ear, only to see Emma with a gun to Luis’ head, while that other guy, the one Rufus said killed Bam Bam, appeared behind her and made for Wyatt, grabbing his wrist before trying to get hold of him around his middle, obviously with the intention of picking him up and dragging him off someplace.

Wyatt didn’t seem particularly enamored with this idea, so he proceeded to sink his teeth into the guy’s wrist, eliciting a yell and a shove which would have had him toppling down the stairs if Jiya hadn’t caught hold of him.

“Hey!” Jiya protested, pulling Wyatt behind her, away from the creepy skinny guy whose name she couldn’t remember.

“You!” Emma barked at her, briefly waving the gun in her direction.  “Downstairs.  Now.”

When Jiya didn’t move, Emma pointed the gun at Wyatt’s head.  “There’s an order of expendability in this world,” she said, “and Master Sergeant Wyatt Logan comes right after the entry labeled ‘cannon fodder.’  You’ve seen one soldier, I guess you’ve seen ’em all.”

Jiya kind of hoped Wyatt didn’t know what Emma meant by that, as she’d already heard him referred to as the expendable one on the team a little too often, causing her to wonder whether it was starting to affect his sense of self-worth somehow.  “He’s not expendable!” Jiya retorted.  “He’s a kid!  And who even does this to a kid?”  She indicated the gun Emma had pointed at him, and Emma merely raised one perfectly-manicured eyebrow at her.

“Look, I have no clue who you are, so I as sure as hell don’t have to explain myself to you,” she said, “but for your information, I’m not the one who broke him.  Turns out on top of all that survivor guilt he also has daddy issues.”  She indicated the bruise to his cheek and the cut above his eye and shrugged.  “Pointing a gun at him is going to have very little impact on his delicate little psyche at this point, let me assure you.”

Jiya ground her teeth together and set her jaw.  “So what do you want?” she demanded.

Emma sighed.  “World peace.  An end to poverty.  Comfortable shoes.  But right now?  I want you to take that scrawny little future pain in my ass and get the hell downstairs!”

Jiya took the opportunity to heft Wyatt up onto her hip and get herself between him and Emma’s Glock if only because she thought pointing a gun at a six-year-old would definitely have a negative effect on the kid, no matter how messed up he might get in the future.

Wyatt didn’t complain too much, although he clearly was not happy at being manhandled in such a way.  Still, he didn’t offer to bite her like he had the scrawny guy (Chris?  Karl?) so Jiya took that as a win and headed down the rickety wooden stairs with him.

Once at the bottom he started squirming like a feral cat, so she put him down immediately, and settled for making sure he was standing behind her. 

And then she remembered Luis and realized she couldn’t have saved her future yet because Luis wouldn’t be here if she had.

And he wouldn’t have had a gun pointed at his head either.

“Emma, please—” the historian started to protest, hands raised.

“Quiet, Fake Lucy,” Emma snapped.  “You might know me where you come from but I sure as hell don’t know you where I’m from.”

Luis frowned.  “I...what?”

Emma shrugged, waving the gun in the direction of the stairs.  “Down there,” she ordered.  “Right now.”

Luis did as he was instructed, and Emma glanced behind her at the skinny guy.  Karl.  Jiya was pretty sure Rufus had referred to him as Karl.

Emma lowered her voice, but it was still loud enough for Jiya to hear.  “Are you sure those were the last instructions?” she asked, and from the expression on her face she didn’t seem too happy about it.

Karl nodded.  “From the top.  Gotta kill ’em.”

Jiya swallowed.

Emma glanced down at them again.  “But they’re just kids,” she pointed out.

Karl shrugged.  “Right now they are.  In 2017 they take down Rittenhouse.  We wanna change things, we gotta kill ’em.”

Emma chewed on her lip.  “You know, you switched sides pretty damn quick,” she told Karl. 

“I got no loyalty to Flynn,” the former henchman told her.  “I go with whoever pays.  Right now, it’s Rittenhouse.  Thanks for recruiting me.”

Emma huffed.  Then shook her head.  “No,” she said at length.  “We’re not killing them.  We’ll have to think of something else.  Maybe mess them up so much psychologically it’ll fundamentally alter their histories.  Or—or—”

And Jiya suddenly realized she was witnessing the conversation that must have altered the results of her Google searches earlier in the day.

“We could sell ’em,” Karl suggested, and from the horrified expression on Emma’s face, Jiya realized he might actually be serious.  “What?  Could get a whole bucketload of money for three healthy, good-looking kids.”

“We’re not selling them,” Emma told him shortly.

Karl huffed before flicking the safety off on his Beretta.  “Well that brings us right on back to offing them,” he said, before adding, “If you’re squeamish, I’ll do it.” 

Emma put a hand on his arm as he took a step towards the stairs.  “No,” she said forcefully.  “We don’t kill children.  That wasn’t the original assignment and it sure as hell wasn’t what I agreed to.  I need to talk to Management.  Then we’ll decide.  I don’t believe for one second Carol Preston would condone Rittenhouse murdering her own daughter.”

“Maybe we just off the pilot,” Karl suggested.  “That’d sure mess up their party.”

Jiya stiffened as Emma turned her gaze in Rufus’ direction.

And Rufus noticed.

“Why are they looking at me like that?” he asked shortly.

Emma hummed thoughtfully.  “That could work, actually,” she said softly, and Jiya found herself drifting in Rufus’ direction until she was standing in front of him.

Wyatt glanced from Jiya to Rufus and back again.  “Ohhhh,” he said.  “He flies the time machine?”

Rufus blinked at him.  “I what now?” he asked.  “Did you just say ‘time machine’?”

Wyatt nodded.  “Looks like a Buick.”

Lucy frowned.  “There’s no such thing as time travel,” she said.  “Not yet anyway.  Although Einstein thought it might be possible to—”

“Go forward,” Rufus finished for her.  He turned his gaze up to Jiya, screwed up his forehead and asked, “Are you from the future, lady?”

Jiya opened her mouth to reply just as Emma cut in.

“Hey,” the redhead said.  “Make yourselves at home.  You won’t be going anywhere for a  while.”

“If at all,” Karl added with an evil grin, and Emma just scowled at him before turning on her heel and stalking out of the cellar, Flynn’s former henchman right behind her.

The door closed with a thunk, and Wyatt was off up the stairs and investigating the lock before Jiya had time to blink.

“So?” Rufus said, still looking up at Jiya.  “The future?”

Jiya nodded.  “Yeah,” she confirmed.  “We got sent back to rescue you.”

“The midget too?” Lucy asked, inclining her head in Wyatt’s direction.

“Heard that,” Wyatt threw over his shoulder without turning away from the door.  “Sticks n’ stones.”

Lucy stuck her tongue out at his back before murmuring, “Boys.  They’re just so stupid.”

“No, Wyatt’s not from the future,” Jiya said.

“Why does that woman want to kill us?” Rufus asked.  “I sure as heck didn’t do anything.”

“Not yet,” Jiya said.  “But you will.”

“We’re like Sam Beckett,” Wyatt added, turning away from the door for a second to grin down the stairs at Rufus.

Rufus’ eyes widened.  “Really?” he said.  “Coooooooool.  Super cool.  And I’m the pilot?”

Jiya wasn’t entirely sure how much anyone should know about their own future, but she nodded.

“What do I do?” Lucy asked, eyes brightening.

“Uh,” Jiya said.  “I guess you’re kind of the leader?”

Lucy positively beamed.  “Hear that, Midget?” she cooed at Wyatt’s back, the younger kid having already returned his attention to the lock.  “I’m the leader!”

Wyatt huffed.  “Well I just got the door open,” he said.  “So I guess I’m the useful one.”

“What?”  Jiya practically sprinted up the stairs, pushing the door closed just as Wyatt started to open it.  “Wait, wait!” she said.  “They could be out there!”

Wyatt blinked up at her.  “I know that,” he said, “but we’re not gonna know for sure unless we look.”

“Uh—” Jiya murmured, glancing back at Luis.  “Little help here?”

Luis shrugged.  “I’m not a soldier,” he said, jogging up the stairs toward them.  “That’s Flick’s job.”

Jiya glanced down at Wyatt who, she suddenly realized, was the only one of the three kids who hadn’t asked what he did in the future. 

“Master Sergeant,” he said, practically beaming.  “Just like my Grandpa Sherwin.”

Jiya raised an eyebrow.  “Not yet you’re not,” she said.  “So if you think I’m letting you go out there—”

“Too late,” Wyatt said, pulling open the door a crack and sticking out his head.

“Wyatt!” Jiya hissed, grabbing the back of his t-shirt and pulling him back inside.

He grinned up at her. “It’s okay, ma’am,” he said.  “No one out there.”

“Jiya,” Jiya hissed, running a hand across her forehead.  “It’s Jiya.”

“Can we go now?” Rufus asked, glancing from the door to Lucy and back again.

“If the midget has finished trying to get himself killed,” Lucy said. 

Wyatt glanced down the stairs at her.  “If I’m not a soldier yet, then you’re not in charge either,” he told her, before looking up at Jiya.  “She is.”

Jiya straightened.  “Uh,” she stammered.  “Yes.  Yes I am.”  All eyes turned in her direction.  “Okay,” she continued.  “I guess we get the hell out of here first, and then decide what we’re gonna do after that.”

“That’s not much of a plan,” Lucy pointed out.  “Didn’t you ought to know what we’re going to do _before_ we try to escape?”

“Probably,” Jiya agreed.  “But at this particular moment I’d settle for getting you three away from here.  Like, right now.”

*

Of course, the down side to not really having much of a plan besides, “Run!!” was when you finally made it safely back to your time machine only to realize that, firstly, you weren’t sure where to time travel, and, secondly, you could only transport three people at a time.  And there were five of you.

“Why only three?” Rufus asked, curiosity obviously piqued.  And while Jiya would have liked nothing better than to launch into a discussion on the do’s and don’ts of transporting organic matter through a temporal wormhole, she knew she really didn’t have the time.  Ironically.

“I’ll stay,” Luis offered immediately.  “Can’t you take all three?  Surely their combined mass wouldn’t equal that of two adults?”

Jiya bit her lip.  “I don’t—” she began, swallowing hard.  “I don’t want to risk what happened to me happening to any of them,” she said at length.

“I can stay too,” Wyatt piped up.  “I’m not scared.  And I’m real good at hiding.”

Jiya shook her head.  No.  She wasn’t proving her own point about Wyatt’s expendability by abandoning him here.

But Wyatt had other ideas.

“It’s okay,” he said, taking hold of her hand.  “If MacGyver here is your pilot,” he inclined his head in Rufus’ direction, “and Miss Bossy Pants is the leader—” Lucy scowled at him, “—then you need to make sure you get them somewhere safe first, right?”  He blinked up at her and she swallowed, just as Lucy opened her mouth to protest but was beaten to the punch by Rufus.

“I’m Rufus,” the future pilot introduced himself.  “Although MacGyver is super-awesome so I wouldn’t mind being him too.”

Rufus then proceeded to stick out his hand in Wyatt’s direction, and Wyatt shook it like he was trying to copy the way someone had shown him how a manly handshake was supposed to be done.

“Can you teach me how to fly the time machine when we’re grown-ups?” Wyatt asked.

Rufus nodded.  “Sure,” he said.  “Although you have to show me how to pick locks.”

“Deal,” Wyatt agreed.  “I can hotwire a car too.”

Rufus shrugged.  “Yeah, already know how to do that.”

Lucy frowned at them.  “So I get to work with criminals when I’m older?” she asked.  “I’m just checking as I’m going to have to write all of this down in my journal.”

Rufus frowned at her.  “I’m not a criminal!” he protested.  “Learned how to hotwire a car from watching reruns of _The_ _A_ - _Team_.”

Wyatt snickered, and Jiya wasn’t at all sure the boys were taking this whole “time travel mortal peril” thing seriously.

She inclined her head to indicate to Luis they maybe needed a private conversation, and he followed her out of earshot of the kids, just as Lucy was trying to find out whether Rufus watched anything more educational on TV than 1980s action shows.

The answer appeared to be a resounding “no.”

“Okay,” Jiya said, folding her arms across her chest and drumming her fingers on her forearms.  “I guess—I guess I could take Lucy and Rufus and come back real quick for you and Wyatt—”

“Take them where?”

And that was the million dollar question.

“I thought...” Jiya began slowly, steeling herself for Luis’ howls of protest, “I thought maybe we take them home.  Our home.  2017.”

Luis didn’t howl.  But he didn’t seem particularly enamored by the idea either.  “Isn’t that...risky?” he asked.  “I mean, I know they don’t exist in the 2017 we came from, but what if taking them back there shifts time so they _do_ exist, and then as soon as they get to 2017 they’ll be someplace where they already are and...phhhht.”  The sound he made wasn’t actually half as disturbing as the actions that went with it.  “The only way you’ll know they’re safe is if their future selves suddenly reappear in 2017 and then you’ll have two versions of them in the same time period and...phhhht.”

Jiya scratched her head.

Why was time travel so goddamn complicated?

“Not to mention, on a purely selfish level,” Luis continued, “if your team reappear myself and Flick...don’t.”

Jiya bit her lip.  _Yeah, real considerate, Jiya,_ she told herself.  Here she was, enlisting the help of a guy who could very well be erased from existence—or at the very least, erased from his position as historian on one of the most important scientific projects in history—if she succeeded in what she was asking him to help her with.

“Yeah, I guess we kinda don’t know what—what happens to you if...” she trailed off.

Luis shrugged.  “If I’m meant to be here, then I’ll be here,” he said calmly.  “If not?  Then I won’t.”

Jiya smiled weakly at him.  “You’re far too well-adjusted to be working at Mason Industries anyway,” she told him.

He shrugged again.  “There’s another consideration, though,” he added, glancing over at Wyatt.  “Do you really want to bring that kid back into a situation where he’s living with an abusive father?”

Jiya swallowed.  Took a breath.  “We don’t know for sure his dad did that to him,” she reasoned, indicating his injuries, before sighing and shrugging her shoulders resignedly.  “If this is the reality the Wyatt I know came from,” she said, “then the answer has to be ‘yes.’  We can’t change his childhood without changing the person he becomes.  He might never join the army.  Never get posted to Mason Industries.”

_Never know Lucy..._

Luis sighed.  “You’re right, of course,” he admitted.  “It just...doesn’t sit well.”

Jiya glanced over at Wyatt again, who was staring at Rufus wide-eyed while the older boy apparently explained the electrical system in a car and how hot wiring actually worked.

“No,” Jiya agreed.  “It doesn’t.  But if I’ve learned anything from the Rufus, Lucy and Wyatt from my timeline it’s that sometimes you have to make difficult choices in order to preserve history.”

She turned as Wyatt laughed at something Rufus had said to him, and Jiya felt even more guilty about what she knew she was going to have to do to return her reality to the way it was supposed to be.

Wyatt would forgive her.  She knew he would.  But it didn’t make it any easier.

“Look,” Jiya continued slowly, “it’s not gonna take Emma long to find us if we just stand here.  We need to go.”

Luis nodded his agreement.  “Take Rufus and Lucy,” he said.  “Get back here for us as soon as you can.”

“You shouldn’t come back here,” a voice suddenly piped up, and Jiya turned to find Rufus standing at her elbow.  “If the red-haired lady figures out we were here she’ll be waiting for you when you come back.”  He indicated the indentations in the ground where the Lifeboat was standing.

“There’s an abandoned church about a mile that way,” Lucy put in, pointing off to her left.  She glanced at Wyatt and for once didn’t scowl at him.  “You could hide in there while you wait.  No one ever goes there.”

Wyatt nodded.  “Like hide and go seek,” he said with a grin.  “Used to play that with my mom.  She could never find me.”

Jiya still wasn’t particularly happy about this plan, but she couldn’t risk the kids—her future friends—being affected the same way she had been.  “Okay,” she said, putting a hand on Wyatt’s shoulder.  “These are your orders, soldier.”

He gazed up at her, a look of absolute concentration on his face.

“You go with Luis and you do what he tells you when he tells you, right?”

Wyatt glanced at Luis, his expression crinkling a little.  “What if he tells me to do somethin’ dumb?” he asked.

Luis frowned.  “Why would I tell you to do something dumb?”

“I don’t know,” Wyatt said with a shrug.  “Because you’re a grown-up?  Grown-ups do dumb stuff sometimes.”  He glanced down at his feet.  “My dad does dumb stuff all the time.”

Jiya couldn’t argue with that, and neither, apparently, could Luis.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” he said.  “If I do anything dumb, tell me.  But don’t just run off again.”

Wyatt nodded.  “Deal,” he agreed.

“Okay,” Jiya repeated, turning her attention to Luis.  “You promise me...?”

“Not a scratch.”

Rufus sniggered.  “That’s from _Star_ _Wars_ ,” he muttered, probably more to himself than anyone else.

Jiya frowned at him.  “Accidental,” she promised him.  “Now come on, genius, we need to go.”

*

Rufus was even more impressed by the interior of the Lifeboat than Wyatt had been.

To the extent Jiya couldn’t actually get him to sit down.

“What does this do?” he asked excitedly, pointing at the starboard stabilizer control.  “And this one?  Why is that flashing?  Is it supposed to do that?  What’s the screen for?  Is that a map to the future?  Why do you have to...?”

Jiya actually had to tune him out for a second while she initiated the start-up protocol, and then she glanced behind him to see Lucy sitting in her seat just staring at the seatbelts forlornly.

“Lucy?” she asked.  “You okay?”

Lucy continued to stare at the seatbelts.  “Don’t get it,” she said softly.  “Why so many?  And why can’t you just—”

Jiya spun around in her seat and took the two female clips Lucy had been trying to fix together out of her hands before buckling her up efficiently.  “Don’t worry,” she said with a smile.  “You’ll get it eventually.”

Lucy frowned.  “Don’t think so,” she grumbled.  “Stupid seatbelts.”

“They’re actually a pretty straightforward design,” Rufus commented, finally slipping into his own seat and snapping the buckles closed without really seeming to have to think about what he was doing.

Lucy huffed. 

“Alright, guys,” Jiya said.  “Now this might get a little bumpy, but don’t be scared I’ve got everything completely under control.”

She figured if she told herself that often enough, she might start to believe it.

Now if she could just figure out where the hell she was taking them.  Luis was right.  She couldn’t risk taking them to 2017.  She needed to take them into the past.  To someone she could trust.  Someone who wouldn’t hurt them.  Someone who could help her save them.  Someone…

And then she had an idea.

An insanely risky idea.

But an idea nonetheless.

“Okay, here goes nothing.”

As the Lifeboat began to spin up, the only sounds she heard from behind her were a tiny whimper from Lucy’s direction, and Rufus muttering under his breath, “Freakin’ _awesome_!”

And then there was another sound.

A ricochet.

Which sounded horribly like a bullet hitting the outside of the time machine just as the Lifeboat winked out of 1991.

*

An hour later, Jiya was bringing the Lifeboat in to a stop just short of the church Lucy had mentioned.

She was back in 1991—two hours after she left, just to err on the side of caution.

She was as satisfied as she could be that Lucy and Rufus were safe where, when and with the person she had left them. 

Or they were as safe as she could make them.

For now at least. 

Jiya now needed to ensure the same could be said for Wyatt.

“Please don’t be dead, Wyatt,” she murmured to herself, although, as she was pretty sure what she’d heard as she got the Lifeboat the hell out of Dodge had been the sound of a bullet pinging off the hull, she was not at all convinced the odds of Wyatt’s and Luis’ survival were high. 

Part of her had wanted to take the Lifeboat to the spot where she last saw them just in case there were...remains. 

Another part of her was too scared to look.

So when she opened the hatch and peeked out of the Lifeboat, it was a definite relief that all she found herself looking at was an abandoned stone church.

It was pretty much as Lucy had described it, a ramshackle shell of a building surrounded by evergreens and very little of anything else.

Including dead bodies.

Only problem was, if Emma and her henchmen had been shooting at the Lifeboat, Jiya was pretty sure they might have been shooting at Luis and Wyatt too.  Always supposing they hadn’t been taken prisoner.

So they might not even be here.

And if they were, Wyatt had said he was good at hiding, so she might not find them even if they _were_ here.

But why should things go easy, huh?  It wasn’t like any of this had been simple, from the second Rufus disappeared right out of her living room.

Scrambling out of the Lifeboat—and Wyatt wasn’t wrong, they really needed some steps—Jiya carefully looped first around the entire outside of the building before gingerly pushing open a door which was hanging at a crazy angle from one hinge.

It squeaked loud enough to wake the dead, the sound reverberating around the inside of the building for what seemed like eons as Jiya wandered around looking for signs of life.

“Wyatt?” she called, trying to keep her voice low in case there was anyone here she really didn’t want to be bumping into on her own in a dark abandoned, freaky as all hell church.  “Luis?”

There was no reply, only the echo of her own voice bouncing off what was left of the walls.

She walked the inner perimeter of the church three times before deciding Luis and Wyatt weren’t here.

There were no antechambers, no hidden stairways; only one back room that had no roof and was completely open to the elements. 

There was nothing.  There was no one.

She’d lost Wyatt.

Lucy was going to kill her.

That’s when she decided to head back down the central aisle toward the squeaky door; just as something grabbed at her ankle.

She was pretty sure it was her own scream she heard and not Wyatt’s, as the little boy looked up at her out of the hole in the ground where he’d been hiding.

The remains of what might have been a wooden pew at some point in its lifetime had been pushed to one side, Wyatt apparently having pulled the thing over his head to disguise the hole he’d jumped down into.

“Oh my God!” Jiya burst out.  “You’re okay!  Where’s Luis?”

“I knew you’d come back,” Wyatt murmured, and he sounded as terrified as Jiya had ever heard him.  Almost as terrified as he’d sounded that time Flynn had dragged Lucy away and she’d ended up at the World’s Fair.

“I promised, didn’t I?”  She knelt down next to the hole, reaching down and gently pushing his hair out of his eyes.  He just blinked up at her, and Jiya had a horrible feeling he may have been crying.  “Wyatt, honey, where’s Luis?”

Wyatt glanced behind him, and it was only then Jiya realized it wasn’t just a hole he was crouched in; it looked like the remains of a service duct, a shallow tunnel where pipes had been buried beneath the church.

And there was someone else in there with him.

“He’s hurt,” Wyatt said.  “I tried to fix him.  My grandpa showed me what to do.  But there was lots of blood.  So we hid in here.”

“Luis?”

The historian was barely conscious, slumped over with his head against Wyatt’s back and a makeshift bandage tied around his right shoulder.

The bandage was soaked with blood and Luis’ face was ashen and sweaty.

“See?” Wyatt said, glancing over his shoulder at him.  “I told you she’d come back for us.”

Luis smiled weakly.  “You did, kiddo,” he said, his voice barely audible.  “That you did.”

“What the hell happened?” Jiya asked, reaching into the hole for Wyatt, who hesitated.

“Go on, kid,” Luis insisted.  “We need to go home.”

Wyatt frowned at him for a second before accepting Jiya’s help pulling him out of the hole, and she may have totally imagined it, but she was pretty sure he hung on to her a fraction of a second longer than was strictly necessary.

“It’s okay,” she told him.  “You’re safe now.”

Wyatt continued to gaze up at her before shaking his head slightly.  “Don’t think so,” he murmured, his fingers twisting together nervously in front of him.

Jiya couldn’t really argue with that.

“It was Emma’s henchman,” Luis supplied, as Jiya reached into the hole to try and help him out.  “The skinny guy.  Just showed up as you were leaving in the Lifeboat.  Started shooting at us.  Think he was—think he was aiming for—”

“Me,” Wyatt supplied, as Jiya finally managed to haul Luis up onto the church’s broken stone floor.

Jiya glanced from Wyatt back to Luis, who looked even greyer in the increased lighting. 

He nodded slightly.  “It’s true,” he confirmed.  “After you left, it definitely seemed like the guy was gunning for the kid.”

Wyatt crouched down next to the historian and took hold of his good hand.  “He jumped in front of a bullet for me,” he said softly.  “Saved my life.”

Luis swallowed.  “All in a day’s work for your friendly neighborhood history professor,” he said, trying to laugh but all that came out was a tortured splutter.

The injury to his shoulder probably looked worse than it was, Jiya hoped, with her vast experience of bullet wounds garnered entirely from TV and the internet.  Nevertheless, Wyatt wasn’t wrong, the historian had lost a lot of blood and Jiya needed to get him medical attention as quickly as possible.

“Can you stand?” she asked him, and he nodded slightly.

“Made it all the way up here, didn’t we, buddy?” he threw in Wyatt’s direction, and the kid nodded, instantly at his side trying to help him get to his feet.

Jiya took the other side, throwing Luis’ good arm over her shoulder.  “Why didn’t Karl kill you both?” she asked softly, as she began to steer him toward the rickety door.

“Emma showed up,” Luis replied.  “Went crazy at him.  Said they didn’t kill kids.  We got away while they were arguing.”

“Huh,” Jiya mused.  “Good to know.”

They made it back to the Lifeboat without incident, but getting Luis inside proved challenging, and Jiya determined to ask Mason about installing some steps when they got back.

Once inside, Wyatt helped Luis buckle himself into his seat, before fastening himself into his own, his eyes never leaving the historian, as if maintaining a constant check to ensure the guy was still breathing.

“Are we going to the future now?” he asked quietly, as Jiya hit the start-up protocol and the rings began to clatter and vibrate.

She hesitated.

That hadn’t been her plan.

Her plan had been to take Wyatt to Lucy and Rufus.

But that was before Luis had been shot and needed immediate medical attention from people who wouldn’t ask too many awkward questions.

“Yes we are,” she told the little boy at length, eyes glued to the console in front of her.  “Don’t be scared,” she added, remembering her reassurances to his future teammates.

Wyatt didn’t reply, and she figured he was probably more scared of something happening to Luis than of traveling twenty-six years into the future.

The trip was bumpy and noisy, and not for the first time Jiya wondered how Rufus always seemed to accomplish a smoother ride.

As she powered down the Lifeboat, she sucked in a well-earned breath.

They’d made it.

All of them.

Lucy, Rufus and Wyatt were safe for now.  The rest they’d work out later.

“Uh,” Wyatt suddenly piped up from behind her.  “Miss Jiya?  Ma’am?”

“I told you, you don’t need to—” Jiya began, swiveling in her seat.

And stopped dead.

The seat opposite Wyatt’s was empty.

“W-what?” she burst out.  “Where the hell is Luis?”

Wyatt blinked huge, round eyes at her.  “I swear, ma’am,” he stuttered, “one minute he was right there, the next he just—he just...wasn’t,” he finished lamely, blinking again as his eyes became shiny.  “Is he—is he dead?” he asked, bottom lip trembling a little.

Jiya shook her head.  “I don’t think so,” she reassured the boy.  “But I think—I think we may have somehow just saved Lucy.”

Wyatt’s forehead crinkled in confusion.

“Future Lucy,” Jiya tried to explain.  “When I took kid Lucy and Rufus to get help, I guess maybe…”

And then it hit her.

“Shit!”

Wyatt blinked at her again.

“Sorry, kid,” she said.  “Don’t repeat that word, okay?”

Wyatt shrugged at her.

“Listen, we need to get you someplace safe,” she said, slamming her hand against the door control.  “If Luis is no longer in this timeline then my reality could be reasserting itself.”

Wyatt blinked at her.

“There could be two of you,” Jiya added.

Wyatt blinked again.

“Which could be bad,” Jiya concluded. 

She should leave Wyatt here.  If his adult self was in the facility, then maybe the Lifeboat would protect the child version from the giant paradox just looking to rip them both into their constituent atoms.

But she couldn’t leave him here alone. 

Grabbing Wyatt by the hand, she ordered him, “Don’t let go of me,” and he nodded mutely.

She had absolutely no clue what her new “gift” entailed, or why she got the weird feeling that keeping hold of Wyatt was the best chance she had of protecting him from being paradoxed out of existence; all she knew was she had no intention whatsoever of letting go of him any time soon.

She also had no clue what reaction she’d expected upon her return to 2017.  It certainly hadn’t been raised weapons and Master Sergeant Felicity McGregor screaming at her to come out with her hands up.

“Whoa, guys, it’s just me!” she assured the soldier as she popped open the hatch and stuck her head out nervously, the hand not clinging to Wyatt raised shakily in surrender.  “What’s happening?  Did we change something?  Are Rittenhouse in control again?”

“You have that child with you, don’t you?”

It was Mason’s voice.

“Uh,” Jiya stammered.  “Yes?  How did you—?”

“Do you have any idea what could happen to the fabric of space-time should your former colleague suddenly reappear in this timeline while his childhood self is here at the same time?” Mason barked.

Jiya glanced down at Wyatt, who was studiously standing well behind her, looking a little bit on the petrified side of scared senseless.

“Ye-es?” Jiya replied slowly.  “But I didn’t know where else to take him.  Luis was injured and I needed to get him some help quickly, but then he disappeared when we got here, and I didn’t want to just leave Wyatt in the Lifeboat and …”

“Who the hell is Luis?” Flick interrupted.

Jiya swallowed.  “Uh—”

“And what if bringing the child here has saved his life and his adult self pops up?”

Jiya swallowed.  “Did that happen?” she asked tentatively.

When Mason didn’t reply, she stuck her head further out of the hatch, only to see him standing to the left of Flick, arms folded across his chest and Agent Christopher standing next to him looking nothing short of pissed.

Mason huffed.  “Doesn’t mean it won’t,” he replied shortly.

Flick.  Flick was still here, Jiya suddenly realized,

How was Flick still here when Luis wasn’t?  Had they saved Lucy but not Wyatt?  What about Rufus?

Jiya’s brain began to spin into overdrive.

“How did you know I had Wyatt with me?” she asked again.

Agent Christopher inclined her head toward a tablet in her hand.  “Google,” she said.  “The past changed again.  Wyatt Logan still disappeared in 1991 and was never found.  But there’s an obscure news report about a couple of hikers seeing a young boy disappearing into—” she glanced down at the tablet, “—‘some kind of globe-shaped object with spinning rings on the outside which disappeared into thin air right in front of them,’” she read, glancing back up. 

“What about Lucy and Rufus?”

“What about Lucy and Rufus?” Agent Christopher echoed, her forehead crinkling into a frown.

Jiya gulped in a breath.

“Are they here?  Are they safe?”  Wyatt chose that moment to stick his head out of the hatch now that the adults had apparently stopped shouting.  “This is Wyatt,” Jiya said shortly, introducing the boy still clinging to her hand.  “We need to get him—”

Which was when the world decided to end.

Or, at least, that was kind of what it felt like to Jiya.

Everything shuddered in front of her eyes, just like in the hospital when she saw the Golden Gate Bridge unbuild itself, every nerve ending tingling, her synapses firing randomly, her extremities numb except for the fingers clinging to Wyatt’s, and she instinctively hefted the little boy up into her arms, for a second able to see only him, the room around them fading out to grey, then black, her colleagues melting into the darkness, their faces indistinct and unrecognizable, and a sound like a hurricane ripping through her brain building to a crazy crescendo before everything ended with an anticlimactic pop and she was clinging to Wyatt like her life depended on it, like _his_ life depended on it, teeth gritting around the words, “I’m gonna keep you safe, I’m gonna keep you safe,” as she waited for him to literally explode in her arms.

Thankfully, he didn’t.

And when she opened her eyes again he was still clinging to her neck and all she could hear was his ragged breathing above her own.

“Are you okay?” she whispered, and he nodded, but otherwise didn’t reply.

“...and we still don’t know how history has changed again,” Mason was saying, as if nothing had happened.

Jiya blinked.

Mason was staring at her.

And suddenly she was standing in the conference room.

“Jiya?” a familiar voice said.  “Are you okay?  Did you have another...thing?”

She sucked in a breath.  Blinked.  Felt Rufus’ hand on her arm.

Grown-up Rufus.

 _Her_ Rufus.

“Rufus?” she barely dared whisper his name.  “Is that...is that really you?”

Rufus was gazing at her with confusion in his dark eyes.

“Uh,” he mumbled.  “Su-re.  Last time I checked.  Why do you have a child in your arms?”

Jiya took another breath. 

“Where—where did you come from?” she asked breathlessly, her hand on his cheek just to make sure he was real.

He was here.  He was really here!

“Uh.  Chicago?”

Jiya rolled her eyes.  Yep, definitely her Rufus. 

“No, no, just now?  One minute you weren’t here and then...then...”

“Then what?”

Jiya’s attention snapped in the direction of the other voice.

To adult Lucy, who was standing at Rufus’ shoulder.

“Holy crap,” Jiya murmured.  “You saw that, right?” she murmured to the boy in her arms.  “Right?”

Wyatt nodded.  “Not here,” he whispered breathlessly.  “Then here.”

“How did we get from down there—” Jiya glanced out of the window, down onto the gangway where they’d been standing a second earlier, “—to up here?  And how are you two here?”  She added, glancing from Rufus to Lucy and back again.  Then a thought hit her.  “Shit!”  And she flinched.  “Don’t repeat that word, remember?” she instructed Wyatt.  Glancing beyond the boy’s shoulder, she demanded, “Where’s Wyatt?  If he shows up too—”

Lucy’s brow furrowed.  “Who’s Wyatt?” she asked.

And that’s when Jiya felt like all the air had been punched out of her lungs.

_No, no, no..._

“Your soldier!” Jiya barked.

Lucy’s frown deepened.  “Flick’s our soldier,” she replied, glancing behind her to where Felicity McGregor was standing next to Mason, the exact same expression on her face she’d had before Lucy and Rufus had suddenly popped back into Jiya’s reality.

“And who’s Luis?” Mason repeated Flick’s earlier question.

Jiya swallowed.  Took a breath.  Still refused to release the hold she had on Wyatt.

“What do you guys think is happening here?” she asked slowly.

She received only blank looks in answer.

“You said we were in danger,” Rufus began.  “Lucy and me.  Said you had to go find us in 1991.  You said Emma was trying to kill us, said you were going to take us someplace safe.”

“And Wyatt?” Jiya prompted.

Lucy shrugged again.  “We don’t know anyone called Wyatt.”

“Or Luis?”

More blank looks.

Jiya sighed.  “Wyatt Logan was your soldier.  Before Flick.  Luis was your historian.  After Lucy.”  She sighed again.  “And this is Wyatt,” she continued, introducing the boy in her arms for the second time in as many minutes.  “I thought he’d be safe here,” she continued, “but I think maybe I need to get him out of here.  In case his adult self reappears.”  When nobody moved, she added, “Right freakin’ now!” with what she hoped was some urgency.

“His adult self isn’t going to reappear,” Flynn suddenly put in, and Jiya started, not even having realized he was in the room.  He spun a tablet around on the conference table and slid it in Jiya’s direction.

Jiya was almost scared to look.

It was a newspaper headline.

 _Missing_ _boy’s_ _body_ _found_ _in_ _woodland_. _Father_ _arrested_.

Jiya swallowed.

“July 2nd, 1991,” Flynn continued.  “Two days after he disappeared.”

Jiya shook her head.  “This isn’t supposed to happen,” she murmured.  “This isn’t—”

Which was when she glanced at Wyatt.

Who was gazing intently at the tablet.

Jiya didn’t know how well he could read, but she knew he shouldn’t be looking at a newspaper report about his own death.

“Honey,” she said, putting her hand on the back of his head and angling his face back towards her.  “Don’t look at that.”

He blinked at her but otherwise didn’t react at all to what he’d just been looking at.

“That’s my dad,” he said at length.  “Why do you have a picture of my dad?”

Jiya glanced back at the tablet, to the mugshot just below the headline of a dark-haired man in his twenties holding a card proclaiming him as F. Logan and a string of numbers underneath his name.

“It’s nothing, honey,” she told him softly.  “Just research.”

He held her gaze for a long moment, his expression completely blank, before he nodded slightly.

“Okay,” he said.

And Jiya wasn’t sure that’s what he meant at all.

“Maybe we should take him somewhere less—” Lucy started to say, holding out her arms as if to take the boy away from Jiya.

Jiya hesitated, that little voice in her head still nagging at her that she shouldn’t let go of him, just as Wyatt tightened his grip around her neck and buried his face against her shoulder.  Which pretty much sealed the deal.

“I think he’s staying with me,” she said softly.

Lucy nodded, retreating, while Jiya sat, settling the kid in her lap.

Her colleagues, immediate danger averted for now, also took their seats, before Flick voiced the question on the tip of everyone’s tongue.

“So what do we do now?”

Jiya took a breath.

“I have an idea,” she said slowly.  “But it means we need to take Wyatt home.  And I can’t take him.”

The boy raised his face to look at her.

“2nd July 1991 is the day I was born,” Jiya continued.  “And while I know I’m pretty unlikely to bump into my newborn baby self, I don’t wanna risk blowing up the Lifeboat.”

Flynn shook his head.  “I guess Emma can’t get her hands on the kids in 1991 anymore, but we don’t know what else she might try to screw with their existence.”

Jiya nodded her agreement.

“Where did you take us, by the way?” Lucy asked suddenly, and Jiya shrugged.

“Someplace safe,” was all she said.

Agent Christopher frowned.  “I don’t understand why you would want to take Wyatt back to 1991,” she said.  “Won’t that put him in danger?”

“We need to know what happened to him that erased him from our timeline,” Jiya said.  “We can’t keep his six-year-old self here forever, otherwise his adult self will never have existed in 2016 when he was supposed to join the team.  We need him here.”

“No offence meant,” Mason put in, “but do we?  Need him here, I mean.  Looks to me like we’ve managed to get to the same point in time with Sergeant McGregor as our tactical officer as you did with this Wyatt Logan of yours.”

Jiya gritted her teeth.  “People—soldiers—aren’t interchangeable,” she said, for what felt like the hundredth time.  “Did you get the women and children out of the Alamo?”

Flick stiffened and Rufus shook his head.  “No,” he said softly.  “Couldn’t break into the aqueduct.  We barely got out alive.”

“Because Wyatt took hand grenades,” Jiya pointed out.

“He _what_?” Flick burst out.  “Do you know how dangerous that could have been?  If they’d exploded in the Lifeboat...”

“And what about Secretary of State Seward?” Jiya continued.

Flick frowned at her.  “What about him?” she asked a little defensively.

“Did he die in this timeline?”

“Yes, he did,” Lucy put in softly.  “We couldn’t save everyone.  I helped save General Grant, Flick and Rufus saved Vice President Johnson.”

“In my timeline, Rufus saved Vice President Johnson while Wyatt saved Secretary Seward.”

“Rufus is not a soldier,” Flick put in.  “I wasn’t risking his life like that.  If anything had happened to him, we would have been stranded and Flynn could have carried on his rampage through time unchecked.”  She glanced briefly at Flynn.  “No offence meant.”

Flynn shrugged.  “None taken.”

“What about Belgium?” Jiya continued.

Flick frowned at her.  “What _about_ Belgium?” she asked.

“Did you stop Von Braun’s V2 rocket like Wyatt and Rufus did?”

Rufus blinked at her.  “Like we what now?”

“Saving thousands of lives.”

“Lives that could have catastrophically affected the timeline,” Lucy observed.  “Like my sister.  How many other Amys have been erased from time because of your Wyatt?” she added.  “If you ask me, he sounds like a hot-head who barrels straight into something without thinking about the consequences of his actions.  Flick makes the right decision every time.”

Jiya had heard that before.  Although Lucy had been talking about Wyatt at the time.

And, apparently, in this timeline Amy was still erased.

“Look,” she said.  “I don’t know how I can convince you to help me save someone you never met.  But right now?  We’re talking about a six-year-old boy who’s about to be murdered.  You can talk about fate, about ‘meant to be,’ but this is _not_ meant to be.  I don’t believe for a second his father killed him.  It’s Rittenhouse.  It’s Emma.  And we owe it to Wyatt to try and save him, even if you don’t know everything he’s done for this project.”

Wyatt—the little boy currently sitting in her lap—was staring at her earnestly with those blue saucer eyes of his, and she had to avert her gaze for a second.

“What’s ‘murdered?’” he asked at length.

Jiya swallowed.  “A word you don’t need to worry about right now, sweetie,” she told him shortly.

“Am I gonna die?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Oh.  Okay.”

And that was that, apparently, as far as Wyatt was concerned.

“How are we going to achieve that exactly?” Mason asked.

Jiya sat up a little straighter.  “I was hoping the person I took Lucy and Rufus to would be able to help us with that,” she said shortly.  “But maybe even he couldn’t talk her round.”

She stopped abruptly.

Wyatt had removed himself from her lap to wander over to the picture of his dad still looking up from the tablet Flynn had slid across the table.

His fingers were still entwined in hers.

And then they weren’t.

And then everything stopped.

Jiya sucked in a breath as the light changed around her.

She was still sitting in the conference room, but everything had faded, as if her colleagues, the present, none of it was really there anymore and there was just Jiya and an indistinct darkness.

And Wyatt.

But not the six-year-old version.

The adult version of Wyatt, the Wyatt she had known for the past year, was on the other side of the window, standing on the metal gangway that overlooked the Lifeboat’s landing pad.

But not standing on it.

Like he was there but not there, the image of him flickering and guttering like the flame of a candle in a strong breeze.

He was trying to tell her something.

She stood, making her way over to the window where he was frantically slamming his hand against the glass.

She couldn’t hear him but she knew he was saying her name.

Over and over.

“Wyatt?” she said softly.  “Where are you?”

Maybe she was dreaming.  Maybe this was all in her head and she’d somehow nodded off at the conference table and Wyatt wasn’t really here at all.

Except he was.

And he was banging on the glass and yelling her name, even if she couldn’t hear him.

Then he was saying something else.

She tried to lipread him, but couldn’t quite get it, and then he had his phone in his hand, the screen pressed up against the window.

Jiya squinted at it.

The screen was displaying the front page of the New York Times dated 8th May 1945, the headline, _The war in Europe is ended!  Surrender is unconditional; V-E will be proclaimed today..._

V-E Day.

Okay.

She glanced from the screen back up to Wyatt, who was trying to tell her something else.

But she couldn’t quite get it.

“Wyatt?  I don’t—”

Then he was tracing his finger on the glass.

1 - 0 - 1

And then he was pointing at his phone again.

And she lipread one word:  Grandpa.

And then he was gone.

And she was standing in the middle of a town square.

It was sunny and she could smell bread baking and there were half-collapsed buildings and debris strewn all around her, but somehow the people milling about the square seemed happy.

Or maybe just relieved.

A Jeep piled with American soldiers sped past her, almost knocking her over, and as she stepped backwards she sensed someone standing behind her.

Turning, she found herself face to face with a young soldier.

He couldn’t have been much older than eighteen, blue eyes set into a handsome but still boyish face under a regulation buzzcut that didn’t quite disguise thick, dark brown hair.

He had Wyatt’s smile.

“Grandpa...” she murmured.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” the soldier said, and Jiya glanced over her shoulder to see who he was talking to.

But there was no one standing behind her.

And when she turned back to him she realized he was looking right at her.

Blinking, she murmured, “You can see me?” and his smile widened.

“I swear I’ve not touched a drop of liquor gone this past week, ma’am,” he said, and his accent had that same very slight Texan twang his six-year-old grandson had.

Jiya blinked again.

How could he see her?

How could she be here?

It was a thing, a vision, something in her head not something…real.

And then she remembered standing in the basement in 1991 and the child version of Rufus seeming to speak to her.

“Holy crap,” she murmured.

The soldier seemed a little taken aback by her language, and she ducked her head slightly.

“Sorry,” she said, shrugging.  “Kind of didn’t expect to be here.”

The soldier shrugged right on back.  “Don’t think any of us kind of expected to be here, ma’am,” he agreed.

“It’s…”  She paused for a second.  “What’s your name?” she asked shortly.

The soldier glanced down at the name tag on his chest with an easy grin, and Jiya could have kicked herself.  “Private Sherwin, ma’am,” he confirmed.

Grandpa Sherwin...

“I don’t know your first name,” Jiya suddenly realized.

The soldier blinked at her.  “Why would you know my first name?” he asked, frowning.

“Uh—” Jiya mumbled.  “I—It’s—”

“Wyatt,” the soldier said, grinning lopsidedly, just like his grandson.  “Private Wyatt Sherwin, ma’am.”  He held out his hand and Jiya hesitated for a second before taking it.

He sure as hell felt real.  Warm fingers.  A firm grip, gentle at the same time; just the way Jiya had noticed six-year-old Wyatt trying to shake Rufus’ hand.

“Jiya,” Jiya returned.

Sherwin nodded, looking her up and down before asking awkwardly, “Are you…were you liberated?  From one of the camps?”

For a second Jiya wasn’t sure what he meant.  Then the penny dropped and she shook her head.  “No,” she said firmly.  “No.  I.  No.  I’m…not from around here.”

Sherwin nodded again.  “I figured, ma’am.”

“Listen,” Jiya continued, glancing around herself carefully.  “I need to tell you something.  And you’re gonna think I’m crazy.”

The soldier continued to gaze at her evenly, no judgement obvious in his expression.  “Okay,” he said.

Jiya took a breath.  “Don’t ask me how I know this,” she began slowly, steeling herself for the young man’s inevitable reaction to what she was about to tell him.  “But one day you’re going to have a grandson.  His name’s going to be Wyatt too.  I guess his mom named—names him after you.  Uh.”

The soldier was still holding her gaze calmly, still no obvious shift in his neutral expression.

“Okay, listen, I know you’re going to find this hard to wrap your head around and I don’t blame you if you think I’m insane because I’d think the same thing if I was in your position and I’m rambling aren’t I?”

Sherwin nodded.  “Yes you are, ma’am,” he confirmed, and darn it, he sounded so like Wyatt it actually sent a shiver up Jiya’s spine.

“Okay,” Jiya took a calming breath.  “The only way to say it is to say it.  Like pulling off a Band Aid.  Your grandson, Wyatt Logan, is going to be murdered on 2nd July, 1991.  You have to stop that from happening.”

She sucked in a breath and waited for the young soldier’s inevitable meltdown.

Private Wyatt Sherwin continued to gaze at her placidly.

“I see,” he said at length.

Jiya blinked at him. 

“1991?”

Jiya nodded.  “He’s six.”

“So…” Sherwin began slowly.  “Are you a psychic?” he asked.  “My Aunt Beulah always said she was a psychic but mostly she just seemed to communicate with dead cats.”

Jiya shook her head slowly.  “I’m not a psychic...”

“Because I may just be an ordinary kid from Texas,” Private Sherwin continued, “and my Aunt Beulah may just have been a little bit crazy, but I know there has to be something going on in the universe besides—this.”  He glanced around himself, at the bombed-out buildings and the shell-shocked townsfolk, and the incongruous bunting hanging from half-collapsed storefronts.

Jiya nodded.  “I think there is,” she agreed.  “And I don’t know whether I’m it.  But your grandson is going to be my friend someday, and I know I don’t want him to die.  So if—if whatever this is can save him, then—then, will you help me save him?”

Sherwin drew in a breath.  “Named after me, huh?”  He puffed out his chest just a little bit.

Jiya nodded again.  “And he idolizes you.”

The soldier sucked in another breath.  “Who murders him?  So’s I’m ready for ’em.”

Jiya shrugged.  “I don’t know,” she admitted.  “Possibly a woman with red hair.  They try to blame his father, but I don’t think it was—will be—him.”

Private Sherwin nodded again resolutely.  “Okay then, ma’am,” he said simply.  “I’ll be ready.  I promise you.  No one is murdering my grandson.  Not as long as there’s breath in my body.”

And Jiya believed him.

Although she wasn’t entirely sure why _he_ believed _her_.

She smiled at him, suddenly realizing she was still hanging on to his hand.  “Thank you,” she began.  “For believing me.”

“Never said I believed you, ma’am,” the soldier said, grinning lopsidedly and winking at her genially.

Jiya squeezed his hand again, before suddenly feeling six-year-old fingers entwined in her other hand, and as she glanced down the light changed from sunlight to LED as the town square she’d been standing in melted back into the conference room.

“Miss Jiya?”

She blinked.

Glanced down at Wyatt.

Glanced back to where his adult self—and then his grandfather—had been standing.

“Jiya?  Jiya!  Did you have another—” and Rufus was at her shoulder, his hand on her arm, concerned eyes trained on her own.  “Where did you go?”

Jiya blinked again.

“I think—” she began.  “I think maybe Germany...”

*

It only took a few minutes with the child version of Wyatt and a whole lot of Google for Jiya to figure out what adult Wyatt had been trying to tell her, where she’d just been, and who she’d just met.

Wyatt’s grandpa, the six-year-old version of Jiya’s colleague told her proudly, had fought with the 101st Airborne during World War II.

1 - 0 - 1

The 101st Airborne Google, in turn, had told her had been stationed at Berchtesgaden in Germany during the last days of the war, and that’s where Jiya, with a shock of recognition as she stared at the photographs on her computer screen, had met Wyatt’s Grandpa Sherwin on V-E Day.

“So, let me get this straight,” Flynn said, scratching thoughtfully at his neck as Jiya glanced from him to Rufus to Lucy to Flick and finally back to Flynn again.  “You were just in Germany on V-E Day, speaking to Wyatt’s grandfather?”

Jiya nodded earnestly.

“And you just warned him that on 2nd July, 1991 his grandson is going to be murdered?”

Jiya shrugged.  “That about covers it.”

“And he believed you, of course.”

Jiya nodded again.  “I think he did,” she said.  “He has to.”

“Or your soldier is going to die.”

“He’s not _my_ soldier, he’s _our_ soldier.”

“So why isn’t he here?” Flick asked.  “If you’ve saved him?”  The soldier frowned.  “And for that matter, why am _I_ still here?  Shouldn’t I have been, I dunno, erased from this timeline or something?”

Jiya shrugged.  “I guess I need to get kid Wyatt back to 1991 or he never gets to grow up, join the army and eventually get posted to Mason Industries.”  She glanced uncertainly at Rufus.  “Right?”

The coder shrugged.  “Makes as much sense as any other explanation,” he agreed noncommittally.

“I thought you couldn’t go back to 1991?” Agent Christopher pointed out.

“I’m going to take the kids back to an hour after Wyatt and I left,” Jiya explained decisively.  “July 1st.  I’ll leave July 2nd to his grandpa.”

“And while you’re off in 1991, what do we do?” Lucy asked.

Jiya swallowed.  “I need you to go see your mom,” she said, bracing herself.

“You _what_?” Lucy burst out.

“Think about it,” Jiya blurted.  “Your mom can’t have known about whatever Emma has been ordered to do because she would never have signed off on it.  Right?  Send someone to the past to kill her own daughter?  She might be Rittenhouse but you’ve got to admit, they’re big into family.  And if she’s the major player in Rittenhouse we think she is...”  She trailed off while Lucy took a breath.

“You think she can stop this?”

Jiya shrugged.  “It’s worth a shot, right?”

Rufus scratched the back of his head.  “You think she’ll believe us?”

Jiya virtually beamed at him.  “I think I know someone who’ll be able to convince her...”

*

“Thank you,” Jiya said, taking the man’s hand and squeezing it warmly.  “For taking care of them.”

Ethan Cahill glanced down at his eight-year-old granddaughter—the eight-year-old granddaughter who wouldn’t be born for another two years—and smiled fondly.  “No one is hurting my granddaughter,” he said.  “Not while there’s breath in my body.”

It was odd to hear Lucy’s grandfather echoing the words of Wyatt’s grandfather some thirty-four years later.

Lucy’s face was screwed up into an almighty frown.  “I don’t think I like time travel,” she said.  “It makes my head hurt.”

Rufus’ seven-year-old self frowned right on back at her.  “But it all makes perfect sense,” he said.  “If you think about it.”

Lucy squinted at him.  “I’ve thought about it,” she told him, “and it still doesn’t make sense.  And I don’t think anybody ought to know this much about their own future.”

Ethan smiled sadly at her.  “Well, I have to agree with you there, my dear.”

Jiya glanced at him for a second, thoughtfully.  He had been living the life of a double agent for nearly thirty years now, and he still had over thirty more to go until his work finally paid off.

She briefly toyed with the idea of telling him how his actions would eventually bring down Rittenhouse; but Lucy was right.  No one should know too much about their own future.

“Where’s the midget?” Lucy asked suddenly, trying to peer around her grandfather and out onto the porch where Jiya was standing.

When Wyatt stepped out from behind her, Jiya was pretty sure Lucy actually looked relieved.

“Hey,” was all Wyatt said.

Lucy took a breath.  “I’m glad you’re not dead,” was all she said in return, before qualifying that with a slightly more dismissive, “I guess.”  Although it was enough to make Wyatt smile awkwardly at her, to which she lifted her chin and sniffed a little disdainfully.

“We hid in the church,” Wyatt told her.  “Like you said.  They didn’t find us there.”

Lucy blinked at him.  “Are you saying ‘thank you?’”

Wyatt considered, before shrugging.  “I guess,” he said, echoing her own words.

Lucy frowned at him, but made no further comment.

“They came after you?” Rufus asked incredulously, sliding out from where he’d been standing a little behind Lucy’s grandfather.

Wyatt nodded.  “They shot Luis.”

Rufus sucked in a breath, scanning behind where Wyatt and Jiya were standing before asking, “Where is he?  Is he okay?”

Wyatt turned his gaze up to Jiya a little uncertainly.

“He—uh—” she stumbled.  “He went back to his own timeline.”

Rufus’ eyes widened considerably.  “He went phhhht?” he burst out.

Lucy frowned at him.  “Huh?”

And Wyatt nodded in confirmation.  “Right into thin air.”

“I’m sure he’s okay,” Jiya added.  “In whatever timeline he’s supposed to be in.  Doing whatever he’s supposed to be doing.” 

She had no internet in 1981 so had no way to check, mentally cursing herself for not thinking to Google the historian whilst at Mason Industries in 2017.

The guy had saved Wyatt’s life after all.

“So are we safe now?” Lucy asked.  “Can we go home?”

Jiya glanced at the three children in turn, all three of them gazing back at her hopefully.

“Well,” she said, “that all kind of depends on how Mr. Cahill here has done up in the future.”  She studiously didn’t look at Lucy as she added, “As long as he’s convinced the person he needs to convince that nobody needs to hurt you, then you should be fine.”

Lucy squinted at her.  _“Should_ be fine?” she echoed.

“I can be pretty convincing when I want to be,” Ethan interjected with a wink.

Jiya hadn’t told him everything about what she and Lucy had asked him to do in the future, but she’d given him a vague idea.  Right now his future self should be on a field trip from his care home with grown-up Lucy and Rufus, visiting Lucy’s mom.

Jiya didn’t know whether she’d have any clue if they’d been successful, but she was hopeful.

She’d agreed to leave this version of Lucy with her grandfather just a little longer while she took Rufus and Wyatt home.  For once she was determined it wasn’t going to be the future soldier who was left behind.

Still, it was a wrench leaving him at the battered trailer door beyond which she was pretty sure his dad was sleeping off that three-day bender he’d been on.

He hadn’t said anything, hadn’t begged her to take him with her, but he seemed a little withdrawn, a little pensive.  Maybe a little nervous.

“Is your grandpa here?” Jiya asked hopefully, but Wyatt shook his head.

“Don’t see his truck.”

“Does he live far away?”

Wyatt shook his head.  “Just outside of town.”

“Listen,” Jiya continued, crouching down so that she was at eye level with him.  “Can you do something for me?”

Wyatt nodded earnestly.

“Your dad have a phone?”

Wyatt shook his head.

“You know how to use a payphone?”

The little boy nodded.  “My mom showed me.”

“You have your grandpa’s number?”

Wyatt nodded again.  “My mom made me remember it.”

“Good.”  Jiya blew out a breath.  “Is there a payphone nearby?  Where you can call your grandpa?  Get him to come over here?”

Wyatt nodded.  “In the store.”

“You think you can go call him?”

“Don’t got a quarter.”

Jiya fished in her jeans pocket, frowning when she came up empty.

“Here.”  Rufus held out his hand to the younger boy, three quarters appearing seemingly out of nowhere into his palm.

Wyatt hesitated for a second before taking the money.  “Thank you, Rufus,” he said.  “You really are a little like MacGyver.”

Rufus grinned broadly.  “My mom always makes sure I have quarters.  Just in case.”  He glanced up at Jiya, who frowned a little.  “I get bullied,” he explained.  “And stupid.  And just freeze sometimes.”

Rufus had never mentioned that to her before, and Jiya swallowed.

Turning back to Wyatt, she put a hand on his shoulder, looked him in the eye and asked, “You gonna be okay, soldier?”

Wyatt nodded.  “Yes, ma’am,” he confirmed.  “Thank you for taking care of me.  And taking me to the future.”

Jiya nodded.  “You take care,” she told him.  “I get back to 2017 and you’re not there, Lucy will kill me.”

Wyatt smiled softly.  “She still bossy in the future?”

“Not so much,” Jiya told him.  “And she’s a little nicer to you too.”

“Good,” Wyatt said, carefully opening the trailer door.  “Don’t got no time for mean, bossy girls.”

*

Rufus’ mom was still sick by the time Jiya returned him to their apartment in Chicago.

She gathered that he didn’t have any siblings at this point in his life, but she knew his brother was quite a bit younger than him, so that didn’t surprise her.

His dad was home though.

Jiya knew he died when Rufus’ brother was just a baby.  His mom said he worked himself to an early grave trying to take care of them all.

Aaron Carlin was kind of surprised to find his son being walked home by a complete stranger at 9pm in the evening.

“I got a little lost,” Rufus explained, glancing up at his dad a little sheepishly.  “Was supposed to be getting groceries.  This lady said she’d show me the way home.”

It had been Rufus, in actual fact, who’d shown Jiya the way to his apartment block, but if a little white lie kept them both out of trouble, then she’d take it.

Rufus’ dad’s brow crinkled minutely, before he stuck out his hand in Jiya’s direction, which she shook gratefully.  “Then thank you for keeping an eye on my boy,” he said.  “He’s a dreamer, this one.  Most days I wonder whether he’s going to remember where he lives or not.”

Rufus turned and grinned at her, as his dad ushered him into the apartment.

“Thank you, Jiya,” he said.  “For everything.  I hope we still get to be friends.  Later.”  He glanced up at his father, who was frowning again.

Jiya grinned.  “Me too,” she said. 

And she’d never meant anything more in her life.

*

Lucy’s house was pretty much as Jiya had expected, although her mother…wasn’t.

She’d never actually met Carol Preston, but from her pictures, she’d expected something a little more glamorous and a little less…bookish.

She had a notebook in her hand when she answered the door, and an ink smudge across her cheekbone, and Jiya remembered Flynn saying once that all of this time travel nonsense could have been avoided if it hadn’t been for Lucy’s journal.

Writing a journal was obviously something she’d picked up for her mom.

Lucy was quick to explain to her mom that Jiya was her piano teacher’s niece, who had kindly walked her home on the way to the library.

Jiya had no idea whether there actually was a library anywhere near here, but Carol seemed satisfied with her daughter’s explanation as to why she had turned up two hours late from her piano lesson in the company of a complete stranger.

Happy that the kids were now all home safely, it only remained for Jiya to return to 2017 and her own timeline.

Because if she returned to 2017 and she _wasn’t_ in her own timeline, then she wasn’t entirely sure what she was going to do next.

The trip was bumpy but uneventful, and when she popped open the hatch, she was convinced Lucy, Rufus and Wyatt were going to be waiting for her, their memories suddenly full of a young woman called Jiya who had convinced them she was a time traveler back in 1991.

Lucy and Rufus were waiting for her.  As was Agent Christopher, Connor Mason and Garcia Flynn.

But there was no sign of Wyatt.

And Master Sergeant Felicity McGregor was still standing where Wyatt ought to have been at Lucy’s shoulder.

_Dammit._

“Where’s Wyatt?” she demanded, clambering down out of the Lifeboat.

Lucy shrugged almost apologetically.  “Your soldier’s still not here,” she said.

“But nice to see you too, Ms. Marri,” Flick added sardonically.

Jiya took a breath.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” she said.  “I didn’t mean...”

“Something must still happen to him in 1991,” Rufus interrupted, glancing sheepishly at Lucy.  “Despite what your mom...” He trailed off, and Lucy shot him the briefest of glances before running a weary hand across her forehead.

“What happened?” Jiya asked tentatively.

Lucy sighed.  “She was mortified.  Especially with my taking Ethan to see her.  She said she didn’t know, that another faction within Rittenhouse—those loyal to my—to Benjamin Cahill—thought they could save the entire organisation by eliminating his daughter and the people with whom she traveled through time.  When she found out what they’d done, she said she would contact whoever it was giving Emma her orders and have her called off immediately.  I believed her.”

“So your Wyatt should be here,” Flick added.

“He’s not my—” Jiya began to protest for what felt like the hundredth time.

“Unless something still happens to him,” Flynn put in.  “Emma is good at following orders but Karl...  You said it was Karl who shot Luis and tried to kill Wyatt, didn’t you?”

Jiya gulped in a breath.

“Karl?” Rufus interjected.  “The weasel who killed Bam Bam?  _That_ Karl?”

Jiya blinked.  “That still happened in this timeline?”

Felicity glanced over at her.  “Unfortunately, yes,” she confirmed.  “I came down with pneumonia after chasing Jesse James through Narnia, or wherever the hell that was.  Poor Sergeant Baumgardner was covering for me.”

“Then I need to get back to 1991!” Jiya burst out, spinning on her heel towards the Lifeboat.  “July 2nd!  I need to save Wyatt—!”

“You can’t!” 

Jiya’s forward momentum was halted by a firmly restraining hand on her arm, and when she turned back, Agent Christopher was hanging on to her, a stern but sympathetic look on her face.

“None of us can,” she added, her voice softening.

“We’re all too old,” Mason added.  “None of us can take the Lifeboat there.”

“Then don’t go in the Lifeboat,” Rufus put in abruptly.

Jiya blinked at him.  “You know anyone else with a time machine to rent?”

Rufus took a tentative step towards her.  “I remember you,” he said.  “From 1991.”

Jiya blinked at him again.  “You...?”

“I remember being kidnapped by Emma; I remember you, Luis and Wyatt coming to get me and Lucy out of that basement.”

“But...”

“And I remember you saying I’d spoken to you.  In a different timeline.  When you _hadn’t_ gone there in the Lifeboat.”

Jiya sucked in a breath.  “I can’t—it’s not something I can control, it just—”

Rufus took another step towards her.  “If you want to save Wyatt,” he said, “then you need to figure it out.”

Jiya shook her head.  “I can’t.  It’s not—”

“When you wanted to speak to Wyatt’s grandpa, you were suddenly speaking to him, right?”

“Yes, but I don’t know how—”

“Do you want to save Wyatt?”

Jiya hesitated before nodding silently.

“Then go save him.”

Rufus’ hand was touching her arm.

And then it wasn’t.

And she was once again standing outside Wyatt’s trailer.

Holy crap.

It couldn’t be that easy?  Could it?

Her attention snapped to the trailer at the sound of a loud bang and what looked like a bottle of beer hitting the window.  On the inside.

The door swung open abruptly and Wyatt—the six-year-old version she’d spent most of her day with—came scooting out, ducking his head with a, “Yes, sir,” as he skidded off the broken flagstone that served as a porch, a black trash bag in his wake.  It clinked as he dragged it towards a dumpster a couple of trailers over, and Jiya took a step towards him in order to help, before stopping suddenly.

Something had caught her eye off to her right, and she found herself squinting at the figure of a man striding in the direction of Wyatt’s trailer, left hand in his jacket pocket, while the right drew out a handgun.

Which he proceeded to point at Wyatt.

“No!” Jiya found herself yelling.  “Wyatt!”

The boy snapped his head in her direction at the exact same second as the gunman, and Jiya realized with a shock of recognition that Flynn had been right: It was Karl, his former henchman.

She heard a bang, and then another, the sound seeming to reach her ears before the images of Karl first taking a shot at her, and then another at Wyatt.

Glancing down at herself, she was more than a little relieved to discover she didn’t have any holes in her, despite being completely out in the open. 

And that’s when she started to run.

She was closer to Wyatt than Karl was, and gulped in a breath as she saw the boy crumple down behind the dumpster. 

And then she was running faster than she ever remembered running in her life, bullets pinging off the ground all around her as she tried to close the gap between herself and the dumpster.

Karl was shooting at her, but either he was a lousy shot or she was just extremely lucky nothing was hitting her.

Or maybe something else was going on.

She didn’t have time to puzzle over it any longer, however, the sound of gunfire and the sight of the little boy on the ground behind the dumpster spurring her on until she was skidding to a halt next to Wyatt’s position, where she found him hunkered down, face pale and eyes wide.

“Wyatt!” she burst out.  “Did he get you?  You okay?”  She grabbed him by the shoulders to inspect the damage, but he seemed as uninjured as she was.

He nodded at her mutely as another bullet pinged off the dumpster.  “Yes, ma’am,” he managed at last.  “But I think that guy really wants to hurt me.”

Jiya pulled him closer to her, just like she had when she’d been convinced it was the only way to prevent him being paradoxed.  “Not happening,” she told him.  “Not as long as I’m here.”

He blinked up at her, frowning.  “I’m not sure you _are_ here,” he murmured, and for a second she didn’t understand what he meant.

Until she realized she could see the ground through her foot.

“What the hell...?”

Parts of her were fading and becoming translucent, even as she looked at herself, and Wyatt was suddenly the one hanging on to _her_ as if letting her go would be the end of everything.

“Don’t leave!” he begged her, a little bit of panic blooming in his eyes as his fingers dug into her arms almost painfully.  “Please!”

“No, I—” and for a split second she was back in the control room at Mason Industries, Rufus standing almost as close to her as Wyatt, mouthing her name although she couldn’t hear him.

“Please!”  She could still hear Wyatt’s voice even as she looked at Rufus, feel the boy’s fingers gripping her arms.  “Please, Miss Jiya, don’t leave!”

And then she was looking down at Wyatt again, her body no longer flickering in and out of existence, every bit as solid as he was.

“I’m not gonna leave you,” she promised, hanging on to him as hard as he’d been hanging on to her.  “It’s gonna be okay.”

Another round pinged off the dumpster, ricocheting and hitting the ground an inch from Wyatt’s foot.

She pulled him closer and closed her eyes as another bullet whizzed past her ear.  “It’s gonna be okay,” she repeated, even though she wasn’t entirely sure that was true.

Then she heard the sound of an engine and tires on dirt, followed immediately by the distinctive sound of a shotgun being locked and loaded.

“You better drop that popgun, boy, or you’re gonna find yourself without a head,” a firm voice bellowed, and Wyatt immediately began to pull away from the death grip Jiya had on him, scrambling to get out from behind the dumpster.

“Grandpa Sherwin!” he burst out, struggling to get out of Jiya’s arms even as she tried to keep him out of Karl’s line of fire.

“Wait!” she pleaded.  “Wyatt, just wait a second!”

He hesitated, and then there was another voice, a female voice.

Emma.

“Put it down, Karl,” she said evenly.  “Orders from Upstairs.  It’s off.  We’re supposed to go back for a debrief.”  She paused before adding, “And what did I say about us _not_ killing kids?”

There was a click, which sounded like a safety going on, and then, when all sounds of gunfire had ceased, Jiya gingerly raised her head above the dumpster.

Karl was standing not more than four feet from the other side of it, his gun lowered and Emma slightly behind him, her own handgun drawn and pointed in his general direction.

Slightly behind her was a beat-up old Buick pickup, an older guy brandishing a shotgun standing with one foot in the driver’s footwell, using the door as cover.

He had a shock of white hair and striking blue eyes and the second Jiya saw him she knew exactly who he was.

The soldier she met in Germany in 1945.

“Grandpa!”  Wyatt finally managed to twist out of Jiya’s grip and charge across to the pickup, where the older guy caught hold of him with his free hand.

“Whoa there, slow your roll, soldier,” his grandfather said, one hand on his shoulder as he pulled him into his side.  “Gotta make sure the bad guys are completely disarmed before you go runnin’ off out into the open like that!”

Wyatt nodded up at him.  “Yes, sir,” he said.  “I’ll remember next time.”

Sherwin shook his head a little sorrowfully.  “Hope there won’t ever be a next time, kiddo,” he said quietly.

Jiya finally managed to get to her feet, slipping out from her hiding place a little shakily.

Emma considered her for a long moment.  “I don’t think you should be here,” she said at length.  “According to the Mothership’s CPU, the Lifeboat’s still back at the ranch.  And, oh, isn’t this the day you were born?”

Jiya shrugged at her.  “Well _I_ don’t think _you_ should be here, either,” she returned.  “You don’t kill kids, right?”

Emma raised an eyebrow at her, before turning her attention toward Karl.  “You heard the lady,” she said.  “We should go.”

Karl hesitated for a second, scowling at Wyatt as his finger twitched convulsively against the trigger guard of his Beretta.

“Now!” Emma added, a little more forcefully.

Karl sniffed, eyes still locked on Wyatt.  “Sooner or later, soldier boy,” he said.  "Sooner or later.”

They left without another word, not seeming to be in any particular hurry as they headed for Emma’s truck, which had been left half-abandoned by the entrance to the trailer park.

Jiya took a breath before heading over to Sherwin and Wyatt.

“You came!” she burst out, reaching the Buick as Sherwin lowered and broke the shotgun before putting it carefully into the pickup.

He straightened, one hand still around Wyatt’s shoulders as he pulled Jiya into a brief hug with the other.

She grinned at him as she pulled away, turning her attention to Wyatt for a second.  “Good thing you remembered to call him,” she said, inclining her head in his grandpa’s direction.

Wyatt blinked.  Bit his lip.  Blinked again.  “Uh,” he said slowly.  “That was kinda yesterday.”

Yesterday?  Of course it was yesterday.  Jiya frowned, returning her attention to Sherwin.  “Then how did you...?”

“Goddamned time travel,” the former soldier grumbled.  “I gotta be out of my mind!”

“Then you—you remembered?  You _believed_ me?”

“It’s not every day a lady who looks like she jumped right outta _Buck Rogers_ tells you she’s a time traveler and your grandson is gonna be murdered in 46 years’ time,” he said.  “Not somethin’ I was likely to forget.”  He glanced briefly down at Wyatt.  “And I wasn’t taking any chances with this one.”  He swallowed.  “Not after losing his mom.”

Jiya nodded.  “Thank you,” she said, squeezing his hand.  “For believing me.  For—for saving him.”

“Ma’am, I think _I_ oughta be thanking _you_ for saving him.”  He hefted Wyatt up onto his hip, brushing his hair out of his eyes fondly.  “Don’t know what I’d do without this little guy,” he added, his eyes misting up a little.  “Light o’ my life.”

Jiya glanced from Sherwin to Wyatt and realized right there that she and Luis had done the right thing bringing the boy back here.  Regardless of whatever his father may or may not have done.

“He’s safe now,” she assured Sherwin softly.  “From—from up there,” she waved her hand vaguely in the direction Emma and Karl had disappeared, but Sherwin seemed to catch her drift.

“Can you promise me that?” he asked, a little sternly.

Jiya shook her head.  “Honestly?  I don’t know.  I don’t think they’ll try this again, but it depends how desperate they get.”

Sherwin considered his grandson for a second.  “He does good then?” he asked.  “Up there?”

Jiya nodded.  “Real good,” she assured him.

Sherwin grinned, proudly.  “Well alright then.”

Jiya swallowed before tentatively asking, “Is he safe _here_?”  She glanced in the direction of the trailer, and Sherwin followed her gaze earnestly.

“He will be,” he assured her.  “When the court order comes through.  Gave his daddy the chance to step up after his mom passed, but...”  He shook his head a little sadly.  "I guess some folks just ain't cut out to be parents.”

Jiya nodded, relieved.

Wyatt was safe.  _Here_ and _up there_.

“Then I guess my work here is—” and even as she started to say it, Wyatt and his grandfather began to gray out, only to be replaced by an interesting view of Rufus’ sneakers.

“Hey,” she heard Rufus say.  “Whatcha doin’?”

Jiya blinked.

Tried to sit up.

Didn’t quite manage it.

Tried it again.

Blinked again.

Remembered to breathe.

And then realized with a jolt she was sitting on the landing pad in front of the Lifeboat, and Rufus was standing right in front of her, frowning.

“It’s...I...I had a...”

Rufus crouched down until he was more or less on her level, his frown morphing into a slightly more panicked grimace.  “You had a thing, didn’t you?  Another thing?”

“Where...?”  Jiya tried to shake the fuzz out of her brain.  “I was in 1991 and—”

And then she remembered.

And jumped to her feet so fast Rufus was knocked backwards onto his butt.

“Wyatt!” Jiya burst out.  “Where’s Wyatt?  Is he here?”

Rufus struggled into a standing position a little cautiously.  “Honey, knocking your boyfriend on his ass and then yelling another guy’s name is not exactly the best way to a man’s heart.”  She blinked at him.  “And ow.”

Jiya grabbed his upper arms and shook him a little desperately.  “Wyatt Logan.  Master Sergeant.  Dark hair.  Kinda yay tall.  Can kill a guy with a can opener.  Ring any bells?”

“What—?”

“Jiya, are you okay?”  Lucy appeared at Rufus’ shoulder, a look of concern etched onto her face.  “Did you have another thing?”

Jiya tried to take a calming breath but failed utterly.  “Is Wyatt here?” she repeated.  “And I swear to God, either of you says ‘Who’s Wyatt?’ to me again today I am taking a freakin’ ax to this goddamned time machine and—”

“Jiya?”

She stopped talking abruptly.

“You have another thing?”

And she couldn’t even bring herself to be annoyed all three of them had asked her the same stupid question.

Wyatt Logan, in the flesh, not dead, erased, replaced, murdered or in any other way not here.

In the words of his grandfather, “Well alright then,” Jiya muttered, not quite able to stifle the huge grin that had suddenly appeared on her face.

Wyatt squinted at her uncertainly.

“What the hell happened?” Rufus asked.  “You look kinda...”

“...Frazzled,” Lucy finished for him diplomatically.

Jiya frowned as she tried to work out what the hell the Rufus, Lucy and Wyatt from her timeline would remember about any of this.

“What’s the last thing that happened?” she asked urgently.

Rufus glanced at Lucy.  “I spilled coffee on your desk.  Which I’m totally gonna clean up.”  He inclined his head slightly.  “How did you know?  Is that your superpower now?  You can totally see anyone spilling coffee on your desk?”

Jiya sighed.  “Anyone have a sensible answer?”

“We had bagels for breakfast,” Rufus offered instead.

And _that_ sure as hell made her sit up and take notice.

“And then Emma took out the Mothership and we had to come into work on a Saturday—”

“What game were we playing?”

Rufus obviously found the urgency in Jiya’s voice a little bit unsettling.

“Uh.  _Star_ _Wars_ versus _Star_ _Trek_ trivia.  I asked who said, ‘I have a bad feeling about this’ first in _Star_ _Wars_.”

“Anakin Skywalker,” Lucy put in.

“Nah, it was totally Luke,” Wyatt corrected her, before glancing sideways at her, adding, “Totally never took you for a _Star_ _Wars_ geek either.”

“You’ll find I’m full of surprises,” Lucy replied with a wink.

“Not that much of a geek,” Rufus grumbled.  “She got the answer wrong.”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“Hey guys?” Jiya put in.

“How could it be Luke?”

 _“_ In the order the movies came out—”

“You didn’t _say_ in the order the movies came out—”

 _“Guys!!”_ Jiya yelled a little more forcefully.

Three sets of eyes blinked at her.

“Where did Emma take the Mothership?”

Rufus shrugged.  “It looked like 1991 for a second, and then she was back in 2017 so we figured it was a glitch in the Lifeboat’s CPU and the Mothership didn’t actually go anywhere.”

“The timeline reset?” Jiya hazarded.  “Or—or it never happened, maybe?”

Suddenly Wyatt was frowning at her, his expression a little hard to read.  “Did you say 1991?” he asked.

Rufus nodded.  “Good thing it _was_ a glitch because we’re all too old to have gone after her—”

 _“_ I don’t think it was a glitch—” Jiya started to say, just as Wyatt’s face lit up as if he suddenly remembered something important.

“Holy crap!” he burst out.

Next thing Jiya knew, Wyatt had his arms around her and was pulling her into a hug.

“Uh—” she started to query.

“That’s my girlfriend, man,” Rufus put in.  “Just sayin’.”

But Wyatt seemed completely oblivious, hanging onto her for another long second, before finally releasing her and briefly holding her at arms’ length.

“Um,” Jiya said.  “What was that for?”

Wyatt grinned a little sheepishly at her.  “I never got to say thank you,” he said earnestly.  “Before you disappeared.”

Jiya squinted at him.  “You—before—?”

“In 1991,” Wyatt clarified.  “Holy crap, I can’t believe you just popped into my head like that!”

Rufus’ almost perpetual frown deepened.  “Dude, that’s my girlfriend, remember?  She shouldn’t be popping into your anything!”

Wyatt glanced at him.  “What?”

“What?”

“Hey!” Jiya interrupted.  “1991.  Wyatt.  What just popped into your head?”

Wyatt focused his attention back onto her.  “ _You_ did!” he repeated.  “In 1991!  It was _you_!  The lady from the future who took me in her time machine!  I thought maybe it was just a really intense dream I had.  Or something I saw on TV that I remembered as being real.”

Lucy’s frown deepened to match Rufus’.  “She what now?”

“Oh my God, you remember that!” Jiya burst out.  “It actually happened!”

“Wait, what?” Rufus put in.  “What actually—” and then he stopped dead, the expression on his face suddenly matching the one that had just appeared on Wyatt’s.  “No.  Freakin’.  Way.”

“What are we talking about?” Lucy demanded, obviously completely missing something in the conversation.

“Don’t you remember?” Wyatt said.  “The cabin in the woods and the time travel and the nasty lady with the red hair—”

“You kept calling Wyatt a midget,” Rufus added helpfully.

“And I kept calling you bossy,” Wyatt agreed.

Lucy blinked at them all in turn.  Before a slow look of recognition began to dawn on her face.  “That’s not possible,” she said softly.  “I swear, I never had that memory before today.  I don’t—”

“I don’t get it either!” Jiya said.  “But you’re obviously remembering how I spent my day.”

“You saved my life is how you spent your day,” Wyatt said.

“You saved all of us,” Lucy agreed, shaking her head.  “That man you took us to in 1981 was Ethan Cahill,” she added.  “I met my grandfather two years before I was born.  And nearly thirty years _after_ the second time I met him!”

“I might need a diagram to follow all this,” Rufus murmured.  “How do we remember this _now_?  How come I didn’t remember Lucy and Wyatt the first time we met?”  He inclined his head slightly.  “Or did I?”

Jiya shrugged.  “I have no idea,” she said.  “Did you?”

“I have no idea.”

“What happened to Luis?” Wyatt interjected suddenly.

“You remember him?” Jiya asked, a little taken aback.

“He took a bullet for me,” Wyatt pointed out.  “I remember hiding out in a church with him.  And then...he disappeared.”

Jiya nodded.  “Removed from your timeline when I saved Lucy,” she confirmed, before adding, “Any of you remember Flick?”  Her question was met with silence, so she took that as a negative.  “She was here instead of Wyatt.”

“Why wasn’t Wyatt here?” Lucy asked.

“In that timeline, he was murdered when he was six,” Jiya explained.  “By the same guy who killed Dave Baumgardner in Paris.”

“Flynn’s guy?”

“Now Emma’s guy.”

“I am _so_ blowing that asshole’s head off next time I see him,” Wyatt murmured.

“And why don’t we remember this Flick?” Lucy asked.

“Master Sergeant Felicity McGregor.  You never met her in this timeline because Wyatt didn’t get murdered so she was never assigned to Mason Industries in his place.”

“Wait, _that_ Flick?” Wyatt interrupted.  “She and I were stationed together at Pendleton.  Before I came here.  Been on a couple of ops with her.”

“Makes sense if she was on the shortlist to be assigned here,” Lucy observed.  “Did she remember you?”

Wyatt shook his head.  “Don’t think so,” he said.

“I guess she wouldn’t have met you in this timeline?” Rufus hazarded.

“I guess,” Wyatt agreed with a shrug.  “And Luis?” he asked for a second time.

Jiya grabbed the nearest tablet she could find and typed Luis’ name into Google.  “Luis Rivera.  Tenured Professor of History and Anthropology at Stanford University.”  She inclined her head slightly.  “The boy done good!”

“Wait!” Lucy burst out, snatching the tablet out of Jiya’s hand and scowling at it.  “ _Tenured_?  He got _my_ tenure?!”

 _“_ You don’t even know him,” Rufus pointed out.

“And he _did_ take a bullet for me,” Wyatt added.

Lucy put her hand on her hip and turned her scowl onto Wyatt.  “And _my_ _tenure_ , apparently!”

“Let it go, sweetie,” Jiya said soothingly.  “He got a history professorship, you got all of history.  I know which I’d rather have.”

Lucy sighed.

“And we’re not dead,” Rufus added.  “Always a bonus.”

“Thanks to Jiya,” Lucy agreed.

“And her thing,” Wyatt added, causing Jiya’s brow to furrow.  “Emma said you didn’t travel in the Lifeboat that last time.  Right?  And I remember you disappearing.  Just like Luis.  My dad thought I made the whole thing up.”

Rufus’ head swiveled from Jiya to Wyatt and back to Jiya again.  “You time travelled...without a time machine?” he asked incredulously.

“I don’t know,” Jiya admitted.  “Maybe.  Or maybe I didn’t travel anywhere and time travelled around me.”

“Still pretty frickin’ huge, honey.”

“I guess.”

“Is that why you could go to the day you were born without exploding?” Wyatt asked.  “Because you didn’t travel in the Lifeboat?”

Jiya shrugged, glancing at Rufus, who shrugged right on back.  “Maybe?”

“Not using a temporal wormhole,” Rufus agreed.  “Yeah.  Maybe.”

“So what happens now?” Wyatt asked.  “Are Rittenhouse likely to try this again?  Kill us as kids?  Kill our parents?  Some dim distant ancestor eight hundred years ago?”

Lucy shook her head.  “I don’t think so.  My mom...”  She let the sentence hang in the air, the implications obvious without her having to spell them out.  “And my father might be in prison but I’m sure he’s had words with the faction who ordered this.”

“That means _you’re_ safe,” Rufus pointed out.  “What about the rest of us?”

Lucy sighed.  “I’d be dead twenty times over if not for you and Wyatt,” she said.  “And you too, Jiya.  If you weren’t here we’d still be trying not to starve or die of smallpox in 1754, not to mention what you did today.  I don’t think my parents will let anyone hurt you.  At least not in the past.”

“That’s comforting,” Rufus muttered.

“If it’s any consolation,” Jiya said, “you were all really cute kids.”

“Of course we were,” Rufus said, sticking out his chin.  “We’re all adorable.”

“And modest.” 

Jiya cupped his chin in her hands and kissed his cheek fondly. 

He slipped an arm around her waist, steering her towards the conference room, where she could see Agent Christopher beckoning to them through the glass.

She didn’t look particularly happy.

“Uh-oh,” Jiya murmured.

“You can’t be in trouble,” Rufus said.  “You deserve a medal.  Or a pay raise.  Or my undying love.”  He blinked and studiously didn’t look at her as she glanced sideways at him.  “You’re my hero.”

Jiya sniggered.  “Remember that next time I kick your ass on the Playstation.”

“My dad really liked you,” Rufus blurted, as if once he started baring his soul he couldn’t stop.

Although Jiya did.

She stopped dead.

“He what?”

Rufus appeared to examine his sneakers thoroughly.  Twice.  “When you brought me home in 1991?  He told me what a good person you must have been to have done that.”  He swallowed.  Still didn’t look up.  Scratched the back of his neck.  Swallowed again.  “I agree with him.  You’re a good person Jiya.”  He finally looked up at her, just as she thought she might choke on the lump forming in her throat.  “And you _do_ deserve my undying love.”

“Rufus—”

He planted a kiss on her cheek, and she blinked at him.  “Thanks for not letting Wyatt die,” he said.  Then he paused, thought about it, kissed her other cheek and added, “And thanks for not letting Lucy die.” 

Jiya blinked up at him through lowered lashes.  “Are you gonna thank me for not letting _you_ die either?”

Rufus nodded earnestly.  “I am,” he said.  “I am going to thank you by buying you Chinese food and letting you kick my ass on the Playstation.  And by doing this.”

The next kiss was on the lips, and Jiya kind of killed the moment by sniggering as he did it.

Rufus frowned at her.  “My romantic overture was funny to you?”

Jiya took his hand and squeezed it fondly.  “No,” she said honestly.  “It wasn’t.  It’s just…  I was thinking, I could get used to this ‘undying love’ thing.  Maybe I should save your life more often.  Especially if it means you buying me Chinese food.”

Rufus squeezed her hand right on back.  “Play your cards right and someday I might buy you pizza.”

Jiya grinned at him.  “What do I have to do to deserve fried chicken?”

Rufus inclined his head to the side before resuming their walk towards the conference room.  “Give me another twenty-six years.  I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

 

**The End**

 

 

 


End file.
